Sam Johnston, Service Manager for Archives and Records, writes: This single letter (accession 11995) ties Thomas Hardy’s career as a budding architect to one of the key Dorset structures on which he is known to have worked. Athelhampton church, located some four miles east of Dorchester close to the elegant country house of the same name, was constructed in 1861-62. The plans for the church in Hardy’s own hand were purchased by Dorset History Centre in 2022 with substantial support from the FNL (2022 Annual Report, p.36). Acquiring this letter (Vol V, p.198, of the Collected Letters), in which Hardy writes to Alfred de Lafontaine the then owner of Athelhampton, confirms the author’s close involvement in the planning and construction of the church. It helps to inform us of Hardy’s earlier incarnation as an aspiring architect and draughtsman before the literary calling took over. It is particularly gratifying to have been able to acquire the plans and the letter in such quick succession, although the provenance in each case was very different. Hardy’s appreciation of, and strong opinions on, the built environment were things that stayed with him throughout his life.
In the letter, written from his home at Max Gate on 11 January 1919, Hardy apologises for failing to remember the name of the builder of Athelhampton Church in 1861/2 and goes on to comment that he should remember, ‘for though you are wrong in supposing that I designed the church, I made many of the drawings for it under Hicks (with whom I was a pupil) & I helped him to mark out the church & the churchyard….at any rate I was there. I remember the stonemason…Hounsell of Broadway…I incline to the belief it was Hammett; but if I can tell you later on I will do so’. He concludes with a typically Hardyesque line ‘I think you may meet with some old native who will be able to tell you’. Here was Hardy looking back over 55 years and at the height of his acclaim as a novelist and poet at his youthful experience as apprentice architect.
The letter will join the substantial UNESCO-inscribed Hardy archive at DHC. The service has raised sufficient funding to begin a long-anticipated cataloguing project in early 2024. This will bring all 150 or so boxes of the author’s archives to greater prominence and accessibility via a full online catalogue.
Dorset History Centre is extremely grateful once again to the generosity of the Friends of the Nations' Libraries and for its support and encouragement in acquiring this material.
