Tuesday 28th July 2026
Starts 13:30 until 16:30
Came Down Golf Club Dorchester DT2 8NR

Hardy & Archaeology

A Talk with a View followed by a Dorset Cream Tea

Date: Tuesday, 28th July 2026

Time: 1.30pm - The coach leaves Top o' Town car park at 1.30pm, returning around 4.00pm

Cost: £20 Conference Ticket Holders

£22 THS Members

£25 Non-Members

(Ticket price includes coach and a cream tea)

Venue: Came Down Golf Club

Meet: Top o' Town Car Park

Part of the 2026 THS Conference Programme

Also included in the CBA Festival of Archaeology

Priority booking is given to Conference ticket holders

Booking Open to others from 2nd June 2026 (subject to availability)

Join Chris Copson for a fascinating talk on Hardy and Archaeology

Came Down Golf Club has panoramic views over the South Dorset Ridgeway; a nationally significant prehistoric ceremonial landscape, boasting one of the highest concentrations of Bronze Age round barrows and Neolithic monuments in the country. The golf club itself contains an ancient barrow.

Thomas Hardy was deeply interested in archaeology, with his firsthand discoveries directly influencing his poetry and novels set in ancient Wessex. Hardy actively uncovered Roman and Neolithic artifacts, including human remains at his home, Max Gate, unknowingly built on a 5,000-year-old henge known as "Flagstones Monument" or the "Dorset Stonehenge". Excavations there, also uncovered a large sarsen stone, which Hardy re-erected in his garden and named "The Druid Stone".

Hardy was instrumental in early efforts to protect local heritage, supporting the creation of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, which founded the Dorset County Museum. His training as an architect gave him a practical, analytical eye for the "relics of antiquity".

Hardy's writing frequently features, preserves, and reimagines Dorset’s ancient, prehistoric landscapes, highlighting memory, time, and human continuity.

The short story "A Tryst at an Ancient Earthwork" opens with a richly atmospheric description of the natural environment of an illicit night time excavation within the Roman temple of Maiden Castle. The theme of this year's CBA Festival of Archaelogy is "Archaeology and Nature", most appropriate for Hardy.

This fascinating talk, set within a stunning archaeological landscape will finish with a delicious traditional Dorset Cream Tea (included in the ticket price).

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Chris Copson has a background in archaeology and began his career as a field archaeologist.

He is also a military historian, formerly Curator of The Keep Military Museum and is now Historian at the Tank Museum.Thomas Hardy with the Druid Stone