The Tower in this short story is Perrott’s Folly which is located in Edgbaston Birmingham. Also known as The Monument or The Observatory, the tower is 29 metres tall and was built by John Perrott in 1758. Now sitting rather incongruously in a 1960s residential housing estate, the folly, along with the nearby Edgbaston Waterworks Tower are believed to have been the inspiration for the two towers from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Tolkien lived close-by as a child and walked past the two towers each day on his way to school.