Before Thomas Hardy married Emma Gifford, her beau was a curate’s son who lived on the edge of the village of St Clether. And a moment of exquisite pain suffered by that curate's son was captured for posterity by one of England's greatest-ever writers.
In his 1871 poem The Face at the Casement, Hardy describes the moment he ran away with the local maiden – with her former flame gazing out of the window as the lovers departed.
Slowly we drove away, When I turned my head, although not Called to: why I turned I know not Even to this day:
And lo, there in my view Pressed against an upper lattice Was a white face, gazing at us As we withdrew...
Then I deigned a deed of hell; It was done before I knew it; What devil made me do it I cannot tell!
These spine-tingling verses refer to the house on this very page, a splendid Georgian four-bedroom home called The Old Vicarage, which is on the market with Keller Williams at £725,000.
Significantly remodelled and redecorated since Hardy's time – as you'd hope, of course – it's far more than just a lovely family home.
The Old Vicarage comes with five acres of land, a separate barn conversion, a wooded copse, a stream and a glamping business.
The Elizabethan manor that offered refuge to Charles II as he fled to France
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