Description
Bree was the chief village of Bree-land, a small inhabited region about forty miles east of the Shire east of the Old Forest and the Barrow-downs, west of Weathertop, south of Fornost Erain and north of the South Downs. Men and Hobbits lived together in Bree. It is claimed in the Red Book of Westmarch that the arrangement that Men and Hobbits each minded their own affairs in their own ways, but regarding each other as necessary parts of the population and being on friendly terms existed only in Bree-land.
The village was built under and on the western slopes of Bree-hill. It was surrounded by a deep ditch with a thick hedge on its inner side that ran in more than half of a circle from the hill and back to it. The great East Road entered the village through the West-gate of the hedge on the western side of the village, curved to the right to run around the foot of the hill, exited the village in its southern corner through the South-gate of the hedge and then curved to the left back to its easward line. Both gates were closed and guarded by gatekeepers after nightfall who had small lodges on the inside of the gates. During the War of the Ring the West-gate of Bree was guarded by Harry Goatleaf.
The village consisted of about a hundred stone houses, most of them on the slope of the hill above the road with windows on their western side, in which the Men lived. The hill itself was burrowed by Hobbit-holes, in which the Hobbits lived especially on the higher slopes above the houses of the Men. An inn called The Prancing Pony was located on the eastern side of the road where it curved to the south to go around the hill.
Maps
According to their tales the Men of Bree had settled in Bree in the Elder Days. They were Pre-Númenóreans that had migrated from the valleys of the White Mountains to the southern valleys of the Misty Mountains and then north as far as the Barrow Downs. Although few of them survived the turmoils of the Elder Days, they continued to settle in Bree when the Númenóreans returned to Middle-earth.
In S.A. 3320, Bree and the Bree-land became a part of the kingdom of Arnor and the Men of Bree abandoned their old language and adopted Westron as their native language. When the Kingdom of Arnor was divided in T.A. 861, Bree probably became a part of Arthedain, one of the three successor states of Arnor, because Arthedain included the land north of the East Road as far as the Weather Hills and because most of the houses of Bree were north of the East road on the slopes of Bree-hill and Staddle, Combe and Archet, the other villages of Bree-land were also located north of the East Road. However, the possession of Weathertop and the land westwards towards Bree was a matter of debate between Arthedain and the other successor kingdoms of Cardolan and Rhudaur, because Cardolan and Rhudaur desired to have the Palantír of the Tower of Weathertop as Arthedain already possessed the other two Palantírs of the North.
Around T.A. 1300 many Hobbits migrated westward from eastern Eriador and many settled in Bree. In T.A. 1601 many Hobbits left Bree and went west beyond the river Baranduin and founded a colony within Arthedain, The Shire.
After the Fall of Fornost and Arnor in T.A. 1945, the north-south road was only used seldomly and was referred to as the Greenway by the Bree-folk, because it had become overgrown by grass. Bree continued to exist with the unknown protection of the Rangers of the North. Even at the end of the Third Age Bree remained relatively prosperous. Bree was the most westerly settlement of men from the point of view of the Shire by the time of the War of the Ring and had a sizable Hobbit population. Thanks to its location near a major road crossing, one could encounter travelers including Men, Dwarves and Hobbits in a bustling Bree inn. The Rangers of the North also were known to stop in Bree.
On 15 March T.A. 2941 Gandalf and Thorin met seemingly by accident at Bree. They were both thinking about the same problem: the Dragon Smaug at the Lonely Mountain. The meeting led to the undertaking of the Quest of Erebor, which resulted in the death of Smaug and the finding of the One Ring by Bilbo Baggins.
From about T.A. 2953 on the wizard Saruman began to have agents in Bree.
On 29 September T.A. 3018, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took arrived in Bree and met Strider at the largest inn in Bree, The Prancing Pony, owned by Barliman Butterbur. After Meriadoc had been attacked by a Ringwraith Strider feared an attack by servants of the Ringwraiths and convinced them to spend the night in the parlour of the inn instead of their rooms. Nob, an employee of Barliman, stuffed the beds in their rooms to make it appear as if someone was sleeping in them. In the morning of 30 September, T.A. 3018, they discovered that the windows to their rooms had been forced open and that their stuffed beds had been slashed and left Bree on the same day.
When Frodo and his companions returned to Bree on 28 October, T.A. 3019, Barliman Butterbur told them that Bree had been raided early in the year by ruffians from the south during the War of the Ring. Barliman Butterbur believed that they had been let into Bree by Harry Goatleaf and Bill Ferny, who had been on the side of the ruffians and who had fled Bree with them after they had lost the fight against the inhabitants of Bree. In the resulting set-to three Men and two Hobbits from Bree were killed. The defeated ruffians fled to the woods beyond Archet and the wilds where they lived as robbers so that travelling on the road was no longer safe. As a result the inhabitants of Breeland locked up their dwellings early, kept watchers all around the hedge and guarded the gates with a lot of men during the night. He also informed them that the Bree-landers had not understood how much the Rangers of the North had done for their safety, because after they all left (to fight in the War of the Ring in the south) wolves had howled around the fences in the winter and there were dark shapes in the woods, dreadful things that make the blood run cold when he thought of them. After staying in Bree for two nights, Frodo and his companions left Bree on 30 October, T.A. 3019.
After the War of the Ring at the end of the Third Age, the North-kingdom of Arnor was reestablished by Aragorn II. It is probable that Bree became a part of Arnor again and became more prosperous through increased traffic on the Greenway and the East Road, because Gandalf announced that the king would soon be turning his mind to Bree, the Greenway would be opened again, there would be traffic, there would be people and fields where there was wilderness before and that there would be room enough for people between the Isen and the Greyflood and along the shorelands south of the Baranduin and that many folk used to live at the northern end of the Greenway on the North Downs or by Lake Evendim.