Arguably Dorset’s most famous son, the Victorian writer, Thomas Hardy is credited with reviving the modern day notion of King Alfred’s ‘Wessex’ an area stretching from Hampshire in the east and Somerset in the west, but the physical and spiritual heart of which lay in Thomas Hardy’s Dorset.Thomas Hardy
The novels of Thomas Hardy are firmly rooted in the county – he liked to write about places he knew well and people he lived amongst and it is still possible to visit places and landscapes, the villages with thatched cottages, market squares and the architecture of churches, mills and malthouses mentioned in his works. Although some of the sprawling heathland has been replaced by forestry (currently undergoing a process of restoration) the rolling countryside is largely unchanged, creating a beautiful, bucolic place through which to walk. His ‘partly real, partly dream’ description of Dorset still resonates today.
