Thomas Hardy’s home to be opened in full to the public

LONDON - The country home where late British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy wrote some of his best known works is set to be opened in full to the public for the first time.

Hardy had designed Max Gate in Dorchester, Dorset, by himself and it is where he played host to the luminaries of his time including Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Marie Stopes and H G Wells.

The house will be opened from mid-March and thousands of paying visitors will be able to examine the Victorian villa, which is just down the road from the cottage where Hardy was born.

Hardy’s sister Kate had left the building to the National Trust in 1940, and since 1994 only the hall, dining and drawing rooms and garden have been opened twice a week to the public.

But now all three floors of the imposing brick house will be opened to the public five days a week from March to October, and second year PhD student Jacqueline Dillion will be the new live-in custodian of the property.

The Hardy scholar and former military intelligence specialist in the US Army is also helping to restore the whole house to look like it would have done during the author’s day.

“I could not be more excited about this opportunity,” the Daily Mail quoted Dillion as saying.

“To live, work, and write in Hardy’s own house, to help restore the rooms that witnessed TE Lawrence, GB Shaw, Virginia Woolf and even the Prince of Wales’ visits, all while being a resident of Hardy’s own Casterbridge (Dorchester) are all dreams come true for me,” she explained. (ANI)