THOMAS HARDY'S EGDON HEATH

Explore the wild heath and woods that inspired Hardy’s most atmospheric Wessex location

- Edward Griffihs

Thomas Hardy was born in Higher Bockhampton in the cottage which his great-grandfather John had built. Hardy saw ‘Piddletown Heath’ behind it as the ‘great pristine wilderness outside the walls of his ancestral home’. This was Hardy’s Egdon Heath, so beloved by Clym Yeobright who ‘was permeated with its scenes, with its substance and with its odours’ in The Return of the Native. Much of the heath was planted as forest from 1920 to 1940 and Bhompston Heath behind Hardy’s cottage was planted in 1962. On this walk, we follow in the footsteps of Clym and Hardy.

THE WALK

1 From the car park, walk through the south end bollards onto Thorncombe Wood’s path. In 100 yards, take the left ‘Roman Road’ path up through pines. This is already the Roman Road which Hardy described as ‘straight and bare as the pale parting-line in hair’. Over to a paths’ junction, cross to the ‘Roman Road’ kissing-gate into Black Heath Conservation Area with wild Dartmoor ponies. Continue up the Roman Road through trees and gorse to a crossing. Continue to the kissing-gate, but visit left Rushy Pond where the Mellstock Quire met the Devil in The Paphian Ball.