Exploring Britain
“The outskirt of the garden in which Tess found herself had been left uncultivated for
some years, and was now damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen” TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES, THOMAS HARDY
can visit Austen’s former home at the village of Chawton in Hampshire, where she lived from 1809. The most famous chronicler of rural life in Wessex, in his
case a region covering Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and parts of Somerset and Devon, is, of course, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Among many other sites with some connection to Hardy’s novels and poems, you can visit his birthplace, a cottage that his great-grandfather built for the family in 1800, at Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester. Hardy wrote his early novels Under the Greenwood Tree and Far From the Madding Crowd here in the 1870s. Another house, Max Gate, to which Hardy moved in later years and where he wrote Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, among others, is also open to the public. Hardy’s Wessex is a very familiar place, where often only
the names of real places have been changed. Other writers have transposed the characteristics of real places into
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utterly different worlds. John Ronald Reuel (JRR) Tolkien (1892-1973), author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, based The Shire, the peaceful home of the hobbits, far from orcs, dragons and other dangers, on various places in the West Midlands, including the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire; and Sarehole, a village near Birmingham, now swallowed by the city, where the writer lived as a child. Today the 200-year-old watermill and mill pond at Sarehole have been preserved, creating a tranquil island of green in a busy city neighbourhood. Further north, the Lake District has been treasured
since the Lakeland poets rhapsodised on its charms 200 years ago. The best place to find out more about them is Dove Cottage in Grasmere, where William Wordsworth (1770-1850) lived with his wife Mary and their children. Other writers captivated by the Lake District include Arthur Ransome (1884-1967), who set the Swallows
Clockwise from main: Thomas Hardy's cottage in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset; Shakespeare's gravestone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon- Avon; signpost near Haworth, Yorkshire; The George Inn, Southwark, London
BRITAIN 61
PHOTOS: © VISITBRITAIN/BRITAIN ON VIEW/ISTOCK/DUNCAN WALKER
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