A road from Waymeet in the Shire's Westfarthing ran southwards for more than a hundred miles, passing on through the Southfarthing before it came to the river Brandywine. At that point - the southernmost point in the entire Shire - the road crossed over the river at an ancient ford, shallow and stony, known to the Shire-hobbits as Sarn Ford.

Early History

The ford's history ran back into times far earlier than the founding of the Shire. It had originally been named by the Númenóreans, who recalled a similar stony ford on the river Gelion in the First Age, and gave it the same name: Sarn Athrad, 'Ford of Stones'. The ford and its route across Baranduin were known even in the Second Age, and in II 1700 - more than three millennia before the first Hobbits settled in the Shire - it was the site of a crucial battle. At that time Sauron's armies had swept across Eriador and threatened the Elves in Lindon, but a force of Númenóreans sailed to the Elves' defence. A decisive engagement was fought at the ford, in which Sauron was driven back across the river in the first of a series of defeats that would free Eriador from his influence.

Over the next three thousand years, the ford played no further significant part in the greater history of Middle-earth. It lay on a branch of the great North-South Road that connected Gondor and Arnor, and so it doubtless saw the Dúnedain passing across it during the time of the North-kingdom, but it does not enter records again until long afterward. When the Hobbits settled the Shire, it came to mark the southernmost limit of their Southfarthing. The Shire-hobbits partially changed the name of the ford: instead of the ancient Elvish Sarn Athrad it became instead simply 'Sarn Ford'.

The War of the Ring and Beyond

When Gandalf set a guard on the Shire to protect the Ring, Sarn Ford was naturally one of the important points of passage that needed to be watched by the Rangers. On 1 May III 3018, Gandalf entered the Shire by this route and met Aragorn at the ford (suggesting that it was Aragorn himself who had taken on this important duty, though he later departed and left the ford in the keeping of his fellow Dúnedain).

The guard on the ford was later proven to have been a wise precaution. Sauron had discovered the name 'Shire' from Gollum, and on 22 September III 3018, Black Riders came up the road from the south. They arrived there in daylight, to find the ford guarded by the Rangers. Some of these Rangers were filled with terror and fled, but those who remained held Sarn Ford against the Nazgûl through the remaining daylight hours. Once night had fallen, however, the Black Riders could no longer be resisted even by the Dúnedain, and the Nazgûl swept into the Shire in search of 'Baggins' and the Ring. Six days later, Gandalf rode urgently over the ford, making his way northward in search of Frodo and his companions (though in the event he would not meet them until long afterward in Rivendell).

In the months that followed, Sarn Ford became busy with traffic. After Lotho Sackville-Baggins made himself Chief, he sent many wagons of pipe-weed rolling over the Brandywine and into the south, and eventually Saruman, in his guise as 'Sharkey', came up from the south to take command of the Shire himself. After this time, Sarn Ford was guarded once again, this time held by Sharkey's ruffians, until their master was overthrown when the Shire-hobbits rose against him.

The last record of Sarn Ford comes from a time long after Sharkey's defeat and the liberation of the Shire. This was in the spring of the year IV 63 (1484 by the Shire-reckoning), when Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took departed from the Shire. Now both in their old age, they crossed Sarn Ford to follow the long road to Rohan and Gondor, where they would live out their last years.