A BLACK Country based artist is creating a lasting memorial for his famed great uncle - JRR Tolkien who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Metal sculptor Tim Tolkien has designed an impressive bronze relief plaque which will form the centrepiece of a large four-foot high memorial for Pembroke College, Oxford, where the late great author was Rawlinson and Bosworth professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945.

Stourbridge News:

Tim, who lives in Cradley Heath, said: "It was during that period that he was writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This was was the point when he was honing his craft and doing the writing."

He said the memorial will echo the book cover of The Hobbit and features a lot of JRR Tolkien's imagery.

Tim said: "I was asked to tender for the commission by the college in 2013 but the project only got underway seriously last year."

Having designed the piece - which had to secure the approval of the Tolkien estate - Tim created a clay sculpture of his great uncle, followed by a plaster cast which was this week finally used to make the mould for the bronze casting.

And with help from Andrew Dean of AJD Foundries and John Read of Brierley Heritage Foundry in Meeting Lane in Brierley Hill - Tim poured 100 kilos of molten bronze into the mould on Tuesday this week and he expects to find out on Thursday (September 12) how it has turned out.

Stourbridge News:

He said: "It's been a really long, slow process but it's got to the point where it's got to be right. We hope the piece will be in place in the spring 2020 - marking the 75th anniversary of JRR Tolkien leaving Pembroke.

"It will be sited in the old quadrangle diagonally opposite a plaque to Samuelson and next to the windows of what were Tolkien’s rooms when he was in post."