Under The Greenwood Tree

In the beginning of his novel Under the Greenwood Tree Hardy says

"To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality".

The Ackling Dyke Roman Road - AD43

In southern Roman Britain roads were constructed in the years after the invasion of AD43. When areas were pacified, maintenance of the roads became a civil matter and like today it was the responsibility of local authorities. The road that survives in Thorncombe Wood and Puddletown is part of a route that ran between the Roman settlements of Durnovaria (modern Dorchester) and Sorviodunum (Old Sarum on the edge of Salisbury), and on a larger scale was part of the route between Exeter and London.

The road may also have been a "show road" that displayed Roman ingenuity and power. As it climbed the hill where Thorncombe Wood is now, it and many units marching along it would be clearly visible from the well-populated area around Dorchester. The same effect would be gained just to the east, where it runs along a prominent ridge that overlooks the Frome Valley.

The road itself was built up as a bank known as an "agger" made of locally-available materials. A ditch was normally dug on either side for drainage purposes. The agger of the Thorncombe Wood and Puddletown Forest road was built on gravel that was quarried from nearby pits. The original gravel surface is exposed on parts of the section on Duddle Heath, and quarry pits have been recorded in woods nearby.

This deep crater beside the path is called a swallet hole or sinkhole, a hollow in the ground that forms when water dissolves the surface rock. Acidic rainwater gathered underground here dissolves the chalk rock and ultimately weakens it until it collapses in on itself. There are said to be more than 370 swallet holes in this area of the Puddletown Forest.

Thomas Hardy uses a swallet hole as the setting for a scene in Far From the Madding Crowd. In a chapter called ‘The Hollow Amid the Ferns’ he uses the swallet hole as a stage on which to set the burgeoning love affair of Troy and Bathsheba. His description of the hollow is very similar to the one we can see here and might well be the direct inspiration for this scene. The pit was a saucer-shaped concave, naturally formed, with a diameter of about thirty feet, and shallow enough to allow the sunshine to reach their heads. Standing in the centre, the sky overhead was met by a circular horizon of fern.

(Courtesy of www.discoveringbritain.org)

The Rainbarrows

The Rainbarrows are three Bronze Age bowl barrows at the top of Duddle Heath. Edward Cunningham partly excavated the site in 1887 and discovered a number of Urns containing cremations. These urns are now displayed in Dorset County Museum. They offer a vivid glimpse into the spiritual rituals of the local community and show how important the Rainbarrows and surrounding landscape must have been to them.

Thomas Hardy called this area of heath land "Egdon Heath" and the Rainbarrows feature as locations in his 1878 novel "The Return of The Native" and his poem "The Sheep Boy".

In Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", while resting on a Rainbarrow Tess Durbeyfield compares the landscape below with her native Blackmoor and notes that "the world was drawn on a larger pattern here. The enclosures numbered fifty acres rather than ten" .... the myriads of cows stretching from the far east to far west outnumbered any she had ever seen at a glance before.

Kingston Maurward

Kingston Maurward was originally built in 1720 of brick, but King George III then said that he preferred stone. The building was expensively clad in stone to maintain patronage.

The Hardys were tenants of the Kingston Maurward Estate until 1912. Hardy's father was a building contractor for the estate, and Hardy was first educated at the estate school. He later used Kingston Maurward as inspiration and setting for his first novel, "Desperate Remedies", a dramatic, twisting plot of double marriages, lost relatives and murder!

The estate is now home to Kingston Maurward College, one of only two remaining independent specialist land-based colleges in the South West. Over 3000 live-in and day students study agriculture, animal sciences, equine studies, floristry, construction and other rural and allied subjects across the 750 acre estate.

There is a cafe at the college that is open to the public.