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Thomas Hardy 1840 - 1928
Little Englang Cottage 2007
The Obelisk at Wetherby Castle
Weatherby Castle as it is today
The invisible Obelisk |
Links with Thomas Hardy |
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Thomas Hardy was born not far from Milborne St Andrew at Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, on June 2, 1840, where his father worked as a master mason and builder. From his father he gained an appreciation of music, and from his mother an appetite for learning and enjoying the delights of the Dorset countryside which may still be experienced to this day. Hardy's first success as a novelist came in 1874 with the serialization of Far from the Madding Crowd in the Cornhill Magazine. The Cornhill Magazine was founded by George Smith in 1860 with its first editor being the noted author William Makepeace Thackeray. This journal specialized in the serialization of novels including the work of Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot as well as Thomas Hardy. The Cornhill Magazine also published the poetry of Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. The Cornhill Magazine ceased publication in 1975. Far From the Madding Crowd is set in the Dorset village of Puddletown, renamed in the novel as Weatherby and only a few miles from Milborne St Andrew. This novel finally netted Hardy the success that enabled him to give up his architectural practice and concentrate solely on writing. In Far from the Madding Crowd, Milborne St. Andrew is Millpond St. Jude. A lesser known novel first published in 1882, Two on a Tower, charts the tragic romance of Lady Viviette Constantine and Swithin St. Cleve, who is both Lady Viviette's social inferior and ten years her junior. Together in a monastic tower that has been converted into an astronomical observatory, the two lovers "sweep the heavens." Hardy's setting for the Tower was Weatherby Castle also known today as Castle Rings. Now a raised earthwork Weatherby Castle was once a substantial Iron Age Hill Fort with multiple defences covering about 17.5 acres. It is situated just to the south of Milborne St Andrew and in its centre is a large obelisk, 60 feet high. Hardy takes this as the setting for his Tower, which he transposes from the nearby Drax estate. The Obelisk itself was built in 1761 by Edmund Morton Pleydell, the then owner of Milborne House. The Mortons were the most important family of the time in the area of Milborne and Bere Regis with Cardinal Morton becoming Henry the VII's Chancellor. The hill on which the Obelisk stands is now covered in woodland which completely hides it from view, but at the time it was built, it would no doubt have been highly visible from the surrounding area including Milborne St Andrew. Over the years the Obelisk had deteriorated and become unsafe until it was restored in 1990 after money had been raised to stabilise it. Weatherby Castle and its Obelisk are not well known, and most people drive by on the road to Milborne St Andrew without even knowing of its existence. Situated a short distance from the hill is Little England Cottage which is considered to be the setting for the home of Swithin St Cleve described in the novel. "With the key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the side of the slope opposite to that trodden by Lady Constantine, and crossed the field in a line mathematically straight, and in a manner that left no traces, by keeping in the same furrow all the way on tiptoe. In a few minutes he reached a little dell, which occured quite unexpectedly on the other side of the field-fence, and descended to a venerable thatched house, whose enormous roof, broken up by dormers as big as haycocks, could be seen even in the twilight. Over the white walls, built of chalk in the lump, outlines of creepers formed dark patterns, as if drawn in charcoal." Thomas Hardy: Two on a Tower 1882 If you are interested in the life and works of Thomas Hardy see the biography "Hardy" by Martin Seymour-Smith, Published by Bloomsbury, ISBN 0 7475 1037 7
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