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Max Gate is Thomas Hardy’s own creation. An architect by profession, he designed the house himself and his father and brother built it. Being drawn back to his roots, he chose a site close to his Bockhampton birthplace. Hardy bought a 1.5-acre plot from The Duchy of Cornwall Estate, selecting a high windswept heath a mile east of Dorchester.  Hardy supervised the project himself as well as working on one of his greatest books – The Mayor of Casterbridge.

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When Hardy and Emma moved in they both had reservations. Emma found it cold and draughty, Hardy worried about the cost of it all. Despite this he came to love Max Gate and it remained his home until his death.

Built as a ‘two up, two down’ Victorian villa it was a modest size. But as the years passed Hardy came to complain about the lack of room and started thinking about enlarging Max Gate. With the success of Jude The Obscure and now in a strong financial position, he embarked on a building spree that nearly doubled the space of the house.

Hardy’s most famous works – Tess of the d’Ubervilles and Jude the Obscure were written in the study, as was the wealth of poetry of his later years.

Hardy entertained the great and famous of the worlds of literature, art and music in the drawing room. Designed to be light, bright and airy it affords an uninterrupted view of the garden through unusually large windows. His guests included Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Mrs Patrick Campbell, A E Housman, Siegfried Sassoon, H G Wells, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Gustav Holst, Marie Stopes, Sir James Barrie and many others.

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