The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect

The White Horse, Maiden Newton. A blurred, ‘action’ photograph of demolition showing the stripping of 5 feet of dusty thatch. Source is unknown but photograph potentially taken by Thomas Hardy. Courtesy Dorset Museum/Thomas Hardy archive at the Dorset History Centre.

These three extracts, each a series of vignette studies, are all taken from Kester Rattenbury’s fascinating full-length study: The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect, which approaches the great author from the perspective of his first career as a young architect in London and Dorset.

As he established himself as a novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy gave up architecture as a profession, but that early experience both directly and indirectly remained an inescapable presence throughout his written work and in the development of his vision of Wessex – and also at Max Gate, the house that he later built for himself and his wife.

– Niall Hobhouse

Texts:

The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part I by Kester Rattenbury

The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part II by Kester Rattenbury

The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect: Part III by Kester Rattenbury