Thomas Hardy's Cottage

Two glorious days in a row – was it too much to expect three in a row?  The answer was yes.  It was a miserable and wet day, so we went out to find Thomas Hardy’s cottage.  I have to admit that I have never read anything by Thomas Hardy, but I was still interested enough to find out more about him.  We reached our destination and it was still raining, so we got our wet weather gear on and headed off through the woods to find the cottage where he was born and lived as a child.  It is idyllic, and even in the rain looked lovely set in the beautiful cottage garden.

As with all these places, it’s always amazing to find out how small it is when you realise how many people actually lived there.  After a very interesting visit, where we discovered that Thomas Hardy was related to Admiral Hardy in some way, we headed back through the woods to have our picnic in the car.

The rain eased, so we went for a  walk through the woods and encountered some wild ponies.  As the weather didn’t seem to be improving in any way, we headed to the outskirts of Dorchester to find the house that Thomas Hardy designed (for he was also an architect) and was built by his brother and father – Max Gate.  It was also very interesting and we spent longer than we had imagined we would, finding out more about Thomas Hardy and his wives.  We stayed so long, that we didn’t really have time to go for a look around Dorchester, so just headed home and went out to a local pub for tea.

Here is Thomas Hardy’s cottage and birthplace.  I’m sure it looks much better on a sunny day.