Rowling's background, however, is firmly English. She spent her first nine years in Bristol, where she played with a gang of friends, among whom were two whose surname was Potter. Then her father got a job at Rolls-Royce, and they moved to a house by the Forest of Dean, near Chepstow, close to Wales and its legends and wilderness. <.....> Though the setting was an influence on her work, only one character in the books is directly drawn from the Forest of Dean: Hagrid, the enormous Keeper of the Keys, whose dropped word-endings are a Chepstow speciality. In shape he's modelled on the Welsh chapter of Hells Angels who'd swoop down on the town and hog the bar, "huge mountains of leather and hair". http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/0199-scotlandsunday-goring.html
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Rowling's background, however, is firmly English. She spent her first nine years in Bristol, where she played with a gang of friends, among whom were two whose surname was Potter. Then her father got a job at Rolls-Royce, and they moved to a house by the Forest of Dean, near Chepstow, close to Wales and its legends and wilderness.
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Though the setting was an influence on her work, only one character in the books is directly drawn from the Forest of Dean: Hagrid, the enormous Keeper of the Keys, whose dropped word-endings are a Chepstow speciality. In shape he's modelled on the Welsh chapter of Hells Angels who'd swoop down on the town and hog the bar, "huge mountains of leather and hair".
http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/1999/0199-scotlandsunday-goring.html