MORE than £4000 has been raised for Dorothy House in proceeds from the auction of an original letter by author JRR Tolkien.

The letter was generously donated to the hospice by a local academic and professor of chemistry, Chick Wilson, who lectures at the University of Bath.

Previously unpublished, the letter written in 1961 is unique as it gives the first known confirmation that Tolkien had no plans to write a sequel to the Lord of The Rings.

The sale price of the letter went above its valuation of £2-3K and raised £4800, the equivalent funding for five 24 hour days of nursing care for one patient bed on the hospice’s inpatient unit.

Professor Wilson received the framed letter over twenty years ago as a gift from a colleague, professor Chris Gilmore at the University of Glasgow who wrote to Tolkien.

The donated letter from Tolkien states: “I shall not write a sequel to the Lord of the Rings because, as is clearly stated in the course of the story, it is the end of the kind of world about which I write.”