A woodland area lying some fifteen miles to the north of Hobbiton, across the border of the Northfarthing. A 'bole' is a tree-trunk, so the wood's name 'Bindbole' suggests a dense and tangled forest. The northern limit of Bindbole Wood is not shown on any map, so it is hard to be sure how extensive it was. However, given that much of the Northfarthing was either farmland or moorland, the wood was presumably relatively small in size.
Note that many sources give the name of this wood as Bindbale, but 'Bindbole' is definitely the original spelling. However, Tolkien himself seems to have interpreted the name 'Bindbale' on at least one occasion, and apparently considered it to be somehow meaningful. In this sense, the name possibly refers to the nearby croplands in some way (to 'bind a bale' is to bring harvested crops together into a bundle or package).
Notes
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No canonical map shows the northern extent of Bindbole Wood, and so the map for this entry shows only its southern parts. In fact the northern sections of this map, especially the location of Needlehole, are nonetheless slightly conjectural in nature. Needlehole is not shown on any map, but the known route of the road that runs toward it seems to imply that it lay relatively close to Bindbole Wood.
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- Updated 7 March 2022
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