The Linguistic Genius of J.R.R. Tolkien
15 March 2025
The Linguistic Genius of J.R.R. Tolkien: Inventing Languages for Middle-earth ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…’ begins
Just like Harry and his cohorts, there’s nothing I love more than conjuring something out of nothing. My enchanted wizard’s castle looks the absolute business and costs just pennies to put together. I might be a Muggle, but there’s no doubt about it, this is one magical make!
– Assortment of plastic drinks bottles
– Probiotic drinks bottles
– Tape
– Egg boxes
– Large plastic tub
– Newspaper
– Scissors
– Kitchen roll
– PVA glue
– Water
– Acrylic paints
– Palette (sounds fancy but a plastic lid will do)
– Paintbrushes
– Sand
– Cotton buds
– Coloured paper
Take some clean plastic drinks bottles and remove the lids. Arrange the bottles to make a group of towers with the smallest at the front and largest at the back. Tape them together.
Tape clean probiotics drink bottles to the taller towers.
Cut out the cones from inside egg boxes to make turrets for your towers.
Then cut out the outer corner egg compartments to make balconies.
Tape the turrets and balconies in place.
Turn a plastic tub upside down, then place your group of towers onto it and tape them together.
Scrunch up balls of newspaper and tape them to the plastic tub.
Papier-mâché a layer of kitchen roll over the whole thing. Tear up kitchen roll into large squares roughly the size of your palm. In a bowl, mix together one part PVA glue with one part water. Then dip each square into the glue mixture and run it through your fingers to remove the excess. Apply the squares to the structure until the whole thing is covered. Leave it to dry overnight.
To make the castle pictured here, paint the turrets reddish brown and the rock dark grey. For the castle walls, make a textured cream colour by squeezing out some white, brown, yellow and green paint onto a palette. Add tiny dabs of the brown, yellow and green to the white to make cream, then add some sand for texture.
Keep making up the cream and paint in patches, each patch will be a slightly different colour each time but that adds to the overall effect. Towards the bottom of the castle add more green to make it look mossy. Let it dry.
Make some flag poles by taking some cotton buds and cutting off one of the tips. Paint them brown and allow to dry.
Meanwhile, cut out squares of coloured paper then cut out a triangle at one end to make a flag shape. Tape the flags to the flag poles where you removed the cotton bud tip.
The fluffy end can be carefully poked through the holes in the top of the turrets.
Please don’t forget to send us a photo of your enchanted wizard’s castle to the address on the AQUILAnauts’ page of the AQUILA website.
We love to see your makes!
If you enjoyed this brilliant blog, then why not think about a subscription to AQUILA magazine!
Written by the AQUILA team
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