ABSTRACT
Thomas Hardy was born on 2nd June 1840, in a small thatched cottage in the hamlet of Higher Bockhampton three miles from Dorchester. It was a picturesque place. There were several quaint-looking houses, with ‘trees, clipped hedges, orchards, white gate-post-balls’ in the avenue of cherry trees which led to the cottage, and behind it stretched the vast expanse of Egdon or Puddletown Heath. The cottage is still standing, and is used as a Hardy museum, but the other houses, the cherry trees and much of the heath have gone.
