Thomas Hardy, Architect

Picture by Barry

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Wessex (1913-1926)

Picture by Joanna Kiyoné

Wessex, a large rough haired terrier was Thomas Hardy’s favourite dog, described by Sir Newman Flower as the terror of his life whenever he visted Hardy at Max Gate, Dorchester. Wessex is also known to have bitten the author John Galsworthy.

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Egdon Heath

Picture by David Jones

Hardy expert Michael Millgate suggests that this small area of heath beside Thomas Hardy’s birthplace at Upper Bockhampton is the origin of Egdon Heath.

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Woolbridge House

Picture by Mark Robinson

Woolbridge Manor, a fine 17th century gabled Manor House at Wool. It is to this manor house, as Wellbridge House, that Thomas Hardy brought Tess to spend her tragic honeymoon in his novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

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Stinsford Church

Picture by Mike McDaid

There is no Dorset church more closely connected with the architect and writer, Thomas Hardy, than Stinsford. The church is essentially 13c, although the tower is 14c, the north arcade 1630 and the building was altered several times by the Victorians, who removed the musicians’ gallery and box pews.

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Portland Museum

Portland Museum by Paulo

The Portland Museum was founded in 1930 by Dr Marie Stopes, its first curator and famous birth control pioneer. It is housed in two thatched picturesque cottages nestling at Wakeham above Church Ope Cove. One cottage inspired the author Thomas Hardy to centre his famous novel “The Well Beloved ” around it, making it the home of “Avis” the novel’s heroine.

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Thomas Hardy’s Cottage

Thomas Hardy's Cottage by Didier Cornice

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in this small cob and thatch cottage built by his father, a stonemason and local builder. It is located at Higher Bockhampton, a hamlet in the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester and is now maintained by the National Trust

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Kingston Maurward House

Kingston Maurward House by Andrew Dent

Kingston Maurward House is a large Georgian English country house situated in the Frome valley two miles east of Dorchester. Much of the house is now used by Kingston Maurward College, though some of it is used for private functions. Thomas Hardy lived nearby and later referred to Kingston Maurward House as “Knapwater House” in his novel Desperate Remedies.

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St. John’s, Enmore Green

Enmore Green by Sebastian Crump

In his novel Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy describes Enmore Green on the outskirts of Shaftesbury saying “It was a place where the churchyard lay nearer heaven than the church steeple”.  There is no steeple but I think we can see what he mean’t.

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The Mayor of Casterbridge

Barclays, Dorchester by Barry

As the plaque states, ‘This house is reputed to have been lived in by the Mayor of Casterbridge in Thomas Hardy’s story by that name written in 1885′. Today it is the Dorchester branch of Barclays Bank

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