This cottage, where Hardy was born in 1840, was built of cob and thatch by his great-grandfather.

Despite training as an architect, writing was his first love, and it was from here that he wrote several of his early short stories, poetry and novels including ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ and ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’.

The garden reflects most people’s idea of a typical cottage garden, with roses around the door, and the sound of birdsong, even in winter. Once inside, you wil discover that 19th-century rural life, with its open hearths, small windows and stone floors, was not always idyllic.

This monument to the memory of Thomas Hardy was erected by some of his American admirers in 1931.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), novelist and poet, was born in the small cob and thatch cottage..The cottage was built by Hardy's grandfather and has been little altered since the family left. Hardy lived there until he was 34 and his early novels Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd were written there. Behind it stretches a heath, possibly the inspiration for Egdon Heath, of which Hardy wrote in The Return of the Native. The bulk of Hardy's work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, sees characters struggle against their passions and circumstances. The term "cliffhanger" is considered to have originated with his serial novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, also written at the cottage, in which he literally left the protagonist hanging from a cliff.