A chance to own part of Hardy’s Wessex….

My father was a Dorset man—Bridport born and bred—and was always proud of his county. And rightly so. It is indeed breathtakingly beautiful and unspoiled. I remember as a child the excitement of changing trains at Maiden Newton, to take the branch line to Bridport. Leaving the rush and noise of the main tracks and entering a magical land that seemed to enfold me was like travelling back in time.

Now one of the county’s finest houses is for sale at Melton Bingham, and it’s one with a lot of connections to Dorset’s great writer, Thomas Hardy. As you will read in this article:-

 “….Two stone eagles stand on the gateposts to the property; the eagle was on the crest of the Bingham family, who lived in the house for nearly 600 years. Before that, it was owned by the Turbervilles, a Norman family, until, in the late 13th century, Sir Robert Turberville’s daughter and heiress, Lucy, married Robert Bingham of Sutton Bingham in Somerset. Thereafter, the Binghams occupied the estate continuously until 1895. It’s no accident that the name Turberville so closely echoes the d’Urbervilles of Tess fame; a further connection to the book is the character Parson Tringham, said to be a reference to descendant Revd George Bingham….”

The approach to the house is “….through a 14th-century gatehouse, one of the earliest complete surviving parts of the house, the property is, according to Mr Crawford, ‘one of Dorset’s undiscovered and untouched treasures’….”

The 9-bedroom house, its grounds and various other properties are for sale in excess of £8 million and I have to say that if my piggybank stretched to that sum I wouldn’t hesitate to buy.

The Country Life article above has many photographs, as does the estate agent’s link.

PS: I have to concede that there are times when Dorset’s gentle silence is broken unexpectedly, such as when I entered a shop in Beaminster some years ago. My memory serves that it was a used-book shop and rather ill-lit, but I couldn’t swear to that. There was no sign of anyone around and so I just browsed. Suddenly a loud, very clear voice with a rich Dorset burr called out right next to me. “Hello! How are you?” I jumped a mile and turned to see a bright-eyed mynah bird on a perch, head tilted, observing my every move. Thank goodness I hadn’t purloined a book on the sly, because that bird probably had sufficient vocabulary to tell on me!