📍Hardy's Cottage, Higher Bockhampton, Dorchester DT2 8QJ, UK
1840 – 1874“I was born in this thatched cottage on the edge of the heath at Higher Bockhampton, in Dorset, in 1840. My great-grandfather had built it in 1800, of cob and thatch, and it sat in a lane among woods and fields, with the wild heath rising behind it. I was so frail at birth that the midwife thought I had died, until she noticed me breathing. My father, also Thomas, was a master mason and builder, and a fine fiddler who played at country dances and in the church band; my mother, Jemima, loved books and was determined that I would be educated. This cottage gave me almost everything I would write about. My father's music, the old songs, the church musicians and the rural customs went into Under the Greenwood Tree. The heath behind the house became Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native. My mother told me stories of the villages and their hardships, and I walked daily to school in Dorchester, three miles away. At sixteen I was apprenticed to an architect in Dorchester, and I spent several years in London, but I kept coming back here. In this cottage, at my bedroom window looking out on the woods, I wrote my early novels, including Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd, the book that made my name. In 1874 I married Emma Gifford and left to begin a life as a full-time writer, later building Max Gate nearby. The cottage, now cared for by the National Trust, still stands in its woodland lane, and the countryside around it is the heart of the Wessex I created.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today