It faces west, and round the back
and sides
High beeches, bending, hang a veil
of boughs,

Domicilium

If you have been inspired by the work of Thomas Hardy then it is most likely that you have been inquisitively drawn, like so many before you, to seek and experience the locations described in his novels and poems.

Thomas Hardy chose to set most of his work in an area he called 'Wessex', the name of one of the ancient Saxon kingdoms of England. The area covers mainly the South and West of the country. Here you can visit Hardy's fictional settings such as 'Christminster' the Oxford of today or 'Melchester' which is Salisbury with its famous cathedral spire.

'South Wessex' has been closely identified with the county of Dorset and it is here that you find the very heart of Hardy Country. You can follow in the family's footsteps to the place of his birth, or visit Max Gate where he wrote some of his greatest works. You can stroll, cycle or drive along highways and byways, footpaths and river walks, tracing the route of the 'Mellstock Quire' as in the novel 'Under the Greenwood Tree', climbing to 'Rainbarrow' as Eustacia Vye in 'Return of the Native', or visiting 'Shaston', overlooking the Vale of Blackmoor, where Sue and Phillotson lived at Old-Grove Place in 'Jude The Obscure'.

There are so many places that feature in Hardy's work that you could spend a week or more reading poems or passages from novels in exactly the place Hardy describes and in fact many people do. A few places are open to conjecture and you can decide for yourself that spot Hardy is exactly talking about.

As many people come from all over the world to experience the literature of Thomas Hardy and the landscape he describes, and few have as much time as they would perhaps wish, the Society has published tours and trails of the individual novels and poems with biographical detail. We hope these will assist your study or visit and help you to enjoy Hardy's literature and landscape to the full.

Whilst visiting you will find the heart of Hardy Country is in itself very attractive. A large part is designated an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The 95-mile stretch of coastline from Studland Dorset to Exmouth in East Devon forms England's first Natural World Heritage Site. Along this coast is Hardy's 'Knollsea', 'Lulwind or Lulstead Cove', 'Budmouth','Gibraltar of Wessex' or 'Isle of Slingers', 'Abbotsea' and 'Port Bredy'.

We hope you enjoy your visit and please let us know if we can do anything to help take you further in your exploration of Thomas Hardy Country.

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Stinsford Church 'Mellstock'
Location: approximately two miles north of the county town of Dorchester, Dorset.

The Hardy family interests in Stinsford St Michael can be traced back to both his grandparents and parents. Thomas Hardy attended and taught in the Sunday school here. His father led the choir. Throughout Thomas Hardy's life he retained a constant interest in the welfare of the building. He requested that he might be buried here.

The ashes of Thomas Hardy are interred in Westminster Abbey but his heart is buried in Stinsford Churchyard in the grave of Emma who died in 1912. In 1937 his second wife Florence was laid to rest in the same grave.

The memorial window to Hardy, designed by Douglas Strachen, can be seen in the south aisle. The money was raised by public subscription and the window installed two years after Thomas Hardy's death.

Situated next to the Hardy Family graves is the grave of Cecil Day-Lewis. He requested to be buried as near to Hardy as possible, little knowing that he would in fact be buried here in Stinsford Churchyard, arranged by his widow Jill Balcon and son Daniel.

The action of 'Under The Greenwood Tree’ (1871) takes place almost entirely in the Parish of Stinsford at about the time 1830-1840.

Hardy's Cottage
Higher Bockhampton, Dorchester, Dorset. (National Trust)
Location: Approximately three miles northeast of Dorchester. (194) (SY 72-92)

Thomas Hardy was born here on 2nd June 1840 the son of a local stonemason. His great grandfather built the thatched cottage about 1800. Downstairs are the small living rooms and the office from which the elder Hardy conducted his business as builder. Upstairs are the bedrooms in one of which Thomas Hardy was born and given up for dead until rescued by the midwife.

Hardy lived at the cottage for most of the first thirty years of his life. His early poem 'Domicilium' written in his teens describes the cottage as he knew it.

Near to the Cottage is a stone memorial erected in 1931 by American admirers.

The cottage is Tranter Dewy's House in the novel 'Under The Greenwood Tree' (1871) written in the window seat of Hardy's bedroom.

Here Hardy also wrote 'Far From The Madding Crowd' (1873-4).

St Juliot Church, Boscastle, 'Castle Boterel' Cornwall.
On 7 March 1870 Thomas Hardy first met his future wife, Emma Gifford, on the doorstep of St Juliot Rectory. At the time Hardy was working as an architect for the firm G.R. Crickmay and had been sent to work on the repair of the church.

The Thomas Hardy Memorial Window in St Juliot Church is the product of an appeal set up by the Thomas Hardy Society to mark the millennium.

The Society commissioned Simon Whistler, son of the eminent glass engraver the late Sir Laurence Whistler, to design and execute an engraved glass window for the church as a memorial to Hardy. The Bishop of Truro, Rt Revd William Ind. 'Bishop Bill', dedicated it on 5 July 2003.

The window, which is in a South facing position in the Church immediately to the right of the porch, seeks to illustrate three of Hardy's poems. The central light symbolises Hardy's journey from Dorset to Cornwall on that fateful March day in 1870 and contains lines from the poem 'When I set out for Lyonnesse'; the left-hand light illustrates the incident by the stream in the Valency Valley below the church where, picnicking, Hardy and Emma lost a drinking glass in the stream, an incident which Hardy recalls in 'Under the Waterfall'; and the right hand illustrates the great poem 'Beeny Cliff', itself only a mile or two west of St Juliot.

Simon Whistler has included lines from these three poems in, as far as possible, a replica of Hardy's own handwriting.

The window also contains two trophies symbolising Hardy's life as writer and architect, and, in the tracery, the heavenly bodies - sun, moon and stars - suggesting the imagery of light, which suffuses all of Hardy's writings.

Dorset County Museum
High West Street, Dorchester, Dorset.
Location: Town Centre.

Thomas Hardy was one of the founders of the Dorset County Museum.
The Museum houses the main collection of Thomas Hardy memorabilia and the reconstruction of his Max Gate study.

The county town of Dorchester is the 'Casterbridge'of Hardy's novels, 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' (1884-5) was written whilst Hardy was living in Shire Hall Place just off High West Street.

The bronze statue of Hardy by Eric Kennington can be seen at the Top 'O Town.

Max Gate
Dorchester, Dorset. (National Trust)
Location: Approximately one-mile northeast of the town centre.

Hardy and his first wife Emma settled at Max Gate in 1885, a house of Hardy's own design. Here Hardy wrote 'The Woodlanders' (1886-7) 'Tess Of The D'Urbervilles' (1889-91) 'Jude The Obscure' (1892-95) and most of his greatest poetry. Hardy died here on 11 January 1928.

Clouds Hill
Bovington, Dorset. (National Trust)
Location: Approx. one mile from the Bovington Tank Museum (194) (SY 82-88)

Clouds Hill was the home of T.E. Lawrence, author of the Seven Pillars Of Wisdom. He was a friend of Thomas Hardy during the 1920's. He is known perhaps better as Lawrence of Arabia.

Casterbridge

In a speech made when receiving the Freedom of Dorchester (16 November 1910), Hardy said:
' it might be urged that my Casterbridge (if I might mention seriously a name coined off-hand in a moment with no thought of it becoming localized and established) is not Dorchester, not even the Dorchester as it existed sixty or so years before, but a dream-place that never was outside an irresponsible book. Nevertheless, when somebody said to me that "Casterbridge" is a sort of essence of the town as it used to be, "a place more Dorchester than Dorchester itself", I could not absolutely contradict him, though I could not quite perceive it. At any rate, it is not a photograph in words...' (Life, p.351).

Egdon Heath

In his 1895 preface to 'The Return Of The Native'Hardy writes: 'Under the general name of "Egdon Heath", which has been given to the sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with varying degrees of success, or planted to woodland.'