HARDY’S COTTAGE DORSET

This delightful thatched cottage (right) was the birthplace in 1840 of novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, and the site where he wrote his novels Under The Greenwood Tree and Far From The Madding Crowd. If inspiration struck when he was outdoors, without paper readily to hand, he would scribble his thoughts on large dead leaves, or pieces of wood and stone. His ashes were interred in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey – but his heart is buried in the local churchyard next to his wives Emma and Florence.