Hardy’s Casterbridge is still like an alternative world… a bit like Ambridge
IN OUR series, household names revisit their favourite childhood holiday destinations. This week, Archers star ANDREW WINCOTT returns to Hardy country.
HISTORIC Dorchester has long been just a memory for me.
I first visited it in my teens while studying Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor Of Casterbridge for my Alevels. And one of my first professional roles as an actor in the 1980s was as Alec in Hardy’s Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, for a West Country tour that took in Dorchester’s Corn Exchange, still a vibrant arts centre today.
Now, decades later, I got the chance to return to Dorset’s sedate county town with Spi, an old university friend and fellow Hardy fan from my Oxford days.
After checking into the welcoming Duchess Of
Cornwall Inn, we hit the Hardy trail. Our first step was Maumbury Rings, the atmospheric former Neolithic/ Roman amphitheatre – the scene of a clandestine meeting in The Mayor Of Casterbridge between Henchard and the wife he’d sold 20 years earlier. Thankfully it’s no longer used for public executions (even the most genteel towns can have a dark past). Just down the high street stands the landmark King’s Arms Hotel. Hardy wrote The Mayor Of Casterbridge at a desk in the bay window of the Casterbridge Room there – and standing in the great man’s footsteps, I couldn’t help feeling a moment of frisson.
Our next stop was Max Gate, the Grade I listed house that Hardy designed following his early literary success and where he lived until his death in 1928. It’s also where Hardy wrote Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, perhaps his most famous novel. Among the many celebrity visitors who called on him there was Lawrence of Arabia.
The town’s Dorset Museum also boasts a Hardy connection – the great man’s study has been reconstructed there, and you can even admire some of his paintings.
But Dorchester isn’t just for Hardy fans.
In recent years the town has become a bit of a gastro-hub for foodies – the Food And Arts Festival takes place in August – as I discovered.
I lunched on a delicious pesto porchetta at the Merchant restaurant, and my steak dinner at The King’s Arms was cooked to perfection. I can also recommend Drgnfly, which specialises in pan-Asian fare – its sesame crusted tuna and crispy prawn dumplings served with garlic and chilli sauce certainly hit the spot.
So how did Dorchester compare to the town of my youth?
Hardy’s Casterbridge is still as vivid to me now as when I first walked its streets. An alternative world perhaps – a bit like Borsetshire’s Ambridge – but one well worth visiting whether or not you’re a Hardy fan.
In the words of Daniel Defoe, which you can see above the entrance to the town’s Corn Exchange: ‘A man might as well... spend his time... in Dorchester as in any other town in England.’
● B&B doubles at The Duchess Of Cornwall Inn from £90 a night (duchessofcornwall.co.uk). London Waterloo to Dorchester South returns from £34.60 (southwesternrailway.com). Andrew Wincott plays Adam Macy in The Archers, Radio 4.