ABSTRACT
Robert Pakenham On Easter Sunday 1925 I was invited with my parents by adoption, the late Mr and Mrs E.R. Sykes, to tea by Mrs Hardy at Max Gate. I knew Thomas Hardy because I used to meet him on his morning walk east towards West Stafford when we lived at Lewell Lodge, West Knighton, and as a boy I bicycled to Dorchester via Stafford with orders to the County Stores etc. One day he stopped me to show me a bird’s nest by the railway bridge and thereafter I always stopped and talked to him, he was a very nice old boy.
