Walking through Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Back to News

Thomas Hardy, one of the greatest English novelists and poets, knew and loved the rural landscapes of Dorset, spending much of his life in the county where he was born in 1840. The meadows where Tess D’Urberville milked cows, the streets walked by the Mayor of Casterbridge, the thatched cottages of Mellstock – all these were woven into his semi-fictional land. Here his romantic and tragic characters experienced joys and sorrows, often battling with their social circumstances against a backdrop of wind-swept cliffs, chalk downlands and remote villages.

The original ‘Wessex’ was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, and the term had long since fallen out of use until Hardy began to mention it in his novels. It has become a byword for the geographical setting of Hardy’s works, and is now commonly used as an unofficial name for this region of southwest England.

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand
For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand,
Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,
I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be.

From “Wessex Heights” by Thomas Hardy, 1896

In his construction of Wessex, Hardy used a mixture of real and fictional names for landscape features, towns and villages, some of which you will encounter while walking On Foot Holidays’ route through Dorset.

The starting point of your walk is Salisbury, which goes by the name of ‘Melchester’ in Jude the Obscure, and your next destination is Shaftesbury – known as ‘Shaston’ in several of Hardy’s novels.

At Evershot (Hardy’s ‘Evershead’), Tess D’Urberville paused for breakfast at a cottage next to the Sow and Acorn inn – in reality The Acorn Inn where Hardy was a regular customer, and where you will stay. Walk on to Mapperton House – worth a short stop to see the beautiful 17th century frontage of the house that starred as Bathsheba’s farmhouse in the 2015 film of Far from the Madding Crowd.

You’ll be nearly at the coast when you reach Bridport, a quirky little town with dozens of independent shops and a thriving twice-weekly market – it appears as ‘Port Bredy’ in Fellow Townsmen. And your final destination is the traditional seaside town of Lyme Regis, home of renowned fossil hunter Mary Anning – read more here.

You can get a taste of the Dorset hiking experience without leaving your armchair – take a look at our short film:

With thanks to Sebastian Drewett.