Wolvercote Cemetery
City cemetery opened in 1889. The Roman Catholic section contains the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith, headstone inscribed Beren and Lúthien.
Main gate on Banbury Road. The Tolkien grave is in the Roman Catholic section — staff at the cemetery office can point the way. Visitors leave small notes and tokens; please don't disturb adjacent plots.
Wolvercote Cemetery opened in 1889 and lies in the parish of Wolvercote and the district of Cutteslowe, with its main entrance on Banbury Road. It is operated by Oxford City Council as one of the city's principal public cemeteries.
The cemetery's most-visited grave is in the Roman Catholic section: J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), buried with his wife Edith (1889–1971) and later their eldest son John Francis Reuel Tolkien (1917–2003). The shared headstone is inscribed with the names "Beren" (J.R.R.) and "Lúthien" (Edith), the immortal lovers of The Silmarillion — a private dedication that has become one of the literary world's quietest pilgrimage sites. Other notable burials at Wolvercote include the four-minute miler and neurologist Roger Bannister (1929–2018), the philosophers Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), Michael Dummett (1925–2011) and H.L.A. Hart (1907–1992), and the lexicographer James Murray (1837–1915), the OED's primary editor.