Max Gate is the former home of Thomas Hardy and is located on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, England. It was designed and built by Thomas Hardy for his own use in 1885 and he lived there until his death in 1928. In 1940 it was bequeathed to the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

by Hardy's sister and is now open to the public. It was designated as a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

on 8 May 1970.

Description

The house is a Grade I

, having been so designated since 8 May 1970. It was designed by Thomas Hardy and built out of red brick in 1885 in Queen Anne style. The architecture is more similar to country houses designed by

Philip Webb Philip Speakman Webb (12 January 1831 – 17 April 1915) was a British architect and designer sometimes called the Father of Arts and Crafts Architecture. His use of vernacular architecture demonstrated his commitment to "the art of commo ...

rather than those designed by

Richard Norman Shaw Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912), also known as Norman Shaw, was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings. He is considered to be among the g ...

. Thomas Hardy had purchased one and a half acres of land to build the house and was delighted to find Roman relics on the land. The building work was done by his father, who was a builder, and his brother. The name of the house was a pun on the name of a nearby toll-house known as "Mack's Gate" after a previous gate-keeper, Henry Mack. Originally Hardy's house had two rooms downstairs with two rooms above, but Hardy soon found this insufficient for his needs and the house was expanded in 1895, with further additions following. He used three different rooms as studies at different periods of his life. Wanting privacy, Hardy planted a thousand pine trees round the house as a windbreak. In time these grew so vigorously that the house was rendered dark and gloomy, and his second wife, Florence, removed them after his death.

History

Hardy designed and lived in Max Gate from 1885 until his death in 1928. He lived there with his first wife Emma, and then with his second wife

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

. It was there that he wrote '' Tess of the d'Urbervilles'', ''

Jude the Obscure ''Jude the Obscure'' is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895 (though the title page says 1896). It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley ...

'' and ''

The Mayor of Casterbridge ''The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character'' is an 1886 novel by the English author Thomas Hardy. One of Hardy's Wessex novels, it is set in a fictional rural England with Casterbridge standing in for Dorchester in ...

'', as well as much of his

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

. In 1940, Hardy's sister Kate left the house to the

with the stipulation that it should be lived in. The house has been continually occupied since then. It was first opened to the public in 1994 with restricted access and limited opening times for a few days a week. Beginning in 2011 the National Trust opened all three floors of the house to the public five days a week (from March to October), allowing access to the hall, drawing room, two studies, the dining room and the kitchen. In 2013 two bedrooms were also opened up for the first time, including the room where Thomas Hardy wrote the ''Mayor of Casterbridge'' and where he died. The house contains several pieces of Hardy's furniture, although his study has been relocated to the Dorset County Museum.

Neolithic archaeology

Half of the 100m diameter

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

interrupted ditch enclosure known as

Flagstones Flagstone (flag) is a generic flat Rock (geology), stone, sometimes cut in regular rectangular or square shape and usually used for Sidewalk, paving slabs or walkways, patios, flooring, fences and roofing. It may be used for memorials, headstone ...

is under the grounds of Max Gate; the other half was archaeologically excavated in 1987 prior to the construction of the Dorchester bypass.Roland J C Smith, 1997, ''Excavations along the Route of the Dorchester Bypass, Dorset''

Wessex Archaeology Wessex Archaeology is a British company that provides archaeological and heritage services, as well as being an educational charity. Apart from advice and consultancy, it also does fieldwork and publishes research on the sites it surveys. The comp ...

Report

References

External links

Max Gate at the National Trust

''Max Gate''
painting by John Everett {{authority control Country houses in Dorset Buildings and structures in Dorchester, Dorset National Trust properties in Dorset Grade I listed buildings in Dorset Biographical museums in Dorset Historic house museums in Dorset Thomas Hardy Culture in Dorchester, Dorset Literary museums in England