Shire (disambiguation)

A shire is a type of region in the United Kingdom and Australia.

Shire or The Shires may also refer to:

Places

Retail business

People

The Shire (TV series)

The Shire was an Australian reality-drama series that played on Network Ten in Australia and Hulu in the United States. It debuted on Ten on the 16th of July 2012. The series followed the lives of 15 people, that work, live or play in and around Sydney's Sutherland Shire. The series has been described as "dramality" by Ten, a combination of drama with prompting and light scripting. The Shire was created and produced by Shine Australia. Modelled on the American TV show The Hills, the production company describe the series as a reality show version of soap opera Home and Away. The final episode was shown on Monday 10 September 2012.

Cast

Shire (Middle-earth)

The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire refers to an area settled exclusively by Hobbits and largely removed from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is located in the northwest of the continent, in the large region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor. Its name in Westron was Sûza "Shire" or Sûzat "The Shire". Its name in Sindarin was i Drann.

Geography

According to Tolkien, the Shire measured 40 leagues (193 km, 120 miles) from the Far Downs in the west to the Brandywine Bridge in the east, and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from the northern moors to the marshes in the south. This is confirmed in an essay by Tolkien on translating The Lord of the Rings, where he describes the Shire as having an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 km²).

The original territory of the Shire was bounded on the east by the Baranduin River, on the north by uplands rising to the old centre of Arnor, on the west by the White Downs, and on the south by marshland south of the River Shirebourn. After the original settlement, hobbits also expanded to the east into Buckland between the Baranduin and the Old Forest, and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the White Downs and the Tower Hills.