Michel Delving was the chief town of the Shire, set on the White Downs in the Westfarthing, the seat of the Mayor and the place of the Shire's few public buildings -- among them the Mathom-house, the museum where the hobbits kept old things they could not bear to throw away, and the Lockholes, the storage-tunnels that Sharkey's men turned into prisons during their brief tyranny.