South-gate of Bree

The date of the founding of Bree is not well established. We know that it existed in the year III 1300, when the first Hobbits arrived there, but it is implied that the settlement was rather older than this. Its walls and gates might, in principle, have been raised after the town itself, and were perhaps related to the troubles that visited the North-kingdom after the founding of Angmar (also in about the year III 1300).

The position of the South-gate is not as clear as its name might suggest. The Lord of the Rings says that it was '...in the southern corner where the Road ran out of the village.' (The Fellowship of the Ring I 9, At the Sign of the Prancing Pony). The use of the word 'corner' here is slightly strange, given that the hedge around the town is elsewhere described as running in approximately half a circle, but it seems to describe the point where the hedge came to an end against the slopes of the Bree-hill.

To potentially confuse matters slightly, in his unfinished index to the book, Tolkien describes the same gate as the 'eastward gate of Bree, so called because at that point the road was running southwards'. This might almost be taken to suggest that the gate opened eastward rather than southward. In context, though, it seems to refer to the main East Road heading in southerly direction through the gate before turning to continue on eastward.