J.K. Rowling was born in Yate, South Gloucestershire, on 31 July 1965.
Yate is a town near Bristol in southwest England. Rowling’s parents, Peter Rowling and Anne Rowling, were living in the area when she was born. Her family later moved to Winterbourne, a nearby village, where she spent much of her childhood.
Rowling’s early surroundings are often connected with her later writing. She attended Wyedean School and College in Sedbury, Gloucestershire, and the landscape of the English West Country helped shape some readers’ ideas about the settings in her books. However, Hogwarts and the wizarding world are fictional rather than direct portraits of Yate.
A common mix-up is confusing Rowling’s birthplace with Edinburgh, Scotland, where she lived while writing much of Harry Potter and where several locations became associated with the series. Edinburgh was important to her career, but Yate is the town named in biographical records as her birthplace.