| Our private driver will meet clients at Portand Docks where we will firstly travel to Dorchester along a limestone peninsula joined to the mainland by Chesil Beach. County Dorset is Thomas Hardy country—most of the author’s life was spent here and this lovely county was the inspiration for most of his works. Hardy was born in 1840 at Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, to an ordinary family. He was sent to the village school and then to Dorchester. A shy and reflective child, he was encouraged by his mother to read and study beyond the usual level for local children. At the age of nine Hardy played the fiddle at weddings and dances. He made his home here as an adult in 1883, moving from Shire Hall Place to the house he designed and had built by his brother. A drive through Dorchester on the Hardy Country Trail takes you to some of the places in the West Country (Wessex) where he lived and wrote, including those featured in The Trumpet Major, and main setting of The Well Beloved. It is the antiquity of Dorchester that Hardy stresses in The Mayor of Casterbridge and the county is at the heart of both the man and his work. Hardy’s last novel, Jude the Obscure, was published in 1895, after which he turned to poetry. Continue the short distance to Stinsford and visit the charmingly situated village church where Hardy was christened and his family served for many years. Hardy requested that he be buried in the churchyard; however, his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey and only his heart was buried in the Stinsford Churchyard, in the grave of his wife and adjacent to other members of the family. Inside the church are other family memorials and a stained-glass window with an inscription to the writer himself. Next, country lanes lead you to Higher Bockhampton and Hardy’s Cottage. The small cob and thatch cottage is where he was born in 1840, and from where he would walk to school every day in Dorchester—six miles away. It was built by his great-grandfather and has been little altered since. Hardy’s early novels Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd were penned here. |
