Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen lead campaign to turn J.R.R. Tolkien's home into a museum

Martin Freeman and Sir Ian McKellen have joined a campaign to turn J.R.R. Tolkien's former home in Oxford, England, into a museum celebrating the Lord of the Rings author's life.

The actors, who respectively played Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series, have teamed up with a group of Tolkien aficionados promoting Project Northmoor, a fundraising initiative that launched on Wednesday.

Tolkien lived at 20 Northmoor Road from 1930 to 1947, and wrote The Hobbit there. He also started work on the novels that would make up the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

"We cannot achieve this without the support of the worldwide community of Tolkien fans, our fellowship of funders," McKellen said in the project’s promotional video, while his co-star John Rhys-Davies adds: "Unbelievably, considering his importance, there is no centre devoted to Tolkien anywhere in the world. The vision is to make Tolkien’s house into a literary hub that will inspire new generations of writers, artists and filmmakers for many years to come."

British author Julia Golding, who is leading the project, tells The New York Times, "If every Tolkien fan gave us $2, we could do this."

The goal of the group is to raise $6 million (£4.5 million) by mid-March, to purchase the property and turn it into a museum to all things Tolkien.