H05049 PUDDLETOWN CHURCH/LANDMARK QUESTION 6/15/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________
From: harrybatt@mn.rr.com
Subject: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 15, 2005 1:40:01 PM PDT
HELLO Just a detour to pass on this bit of new from the "Dorset Echo"
Work begins on graveyard site
by Peter Hawkins
Wednesday 15 June 2005
WORK was beginning today on a controversial church hall, which will be built
on top of a graveyard.
Contractors were due to begin preliminary work at St Mary's Church in
Puddletown, which has featured in the Thomas Hardy novel Far from the
Madding Crowd.
Permission to build on the site was granted at a consistory court which
ruled that work could go ahead despite opposition.
Georgie Harries, who spoke out against the project, said: "There is nothing
much more that we can do. I think it's disgraceful but we have lost."
When completed the new hall will house a creche, public toilets, a reading
room and will be used for meetings.
Mrs Harries added: "We don't think it's needed - there are plenty of halls
in the village, that can be rented out - it's just desecrating graves for
nothing.
"It doesn't seem to matter to a lot of people. I feel we could chain
ourselves to the railings but it's all done now.
"We're going to ruin a little churchyard which is ancient and beautiful and
once it's there it's there forever."
Puddletown resident Mike Crankshaw set up an exhibition on the building to
dispel myths about the project. He said that people should recognise that
the church was a living breathing building and not a memorial to Thomas
Hardy.
Among the graves due to be removed is that of Thomas Hardy's Aunt - Maria
Sparks.
Architect David Illingworth said that work was due to . . . .
[From John Bridell, Minneapolis]
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From: jacky@wilkibob.me.uk
Subject: RE: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 15, 2005 2:02:07 PM PDT
Oh, I think this is so sad, it is such a lovely church, as well as its
connections with Hardy and FFMC.
Jacky
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 15, 2005 2:14:41 PM PDT
Thanks John --
How terribly sad!
But you have to love the logic -- that the building is a "living, breathing building and not a memorial to ..." (whoever). I guess the day that an ancient church starts breathing it *will* need a toilet and maybe even daycare. And being a "memorial" not to the mortal Hardy (who was "living and breathing") but to a deity of uncertain mortality no doubt it will definitely need a reading room so it can make an identity search.
Cheers,
Rosemarie
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From: jacky@wilkibob.me.uk
Subject: RE: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 15, 2005 2:27:53 PM PDT
Furthermore, I am sure the gurgoyle will prove most useful in the toilets!
The hand of fate as it were thumbing at the materialistic twenty-first
century!
Jacky
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From: sschofi404@pickens.net
Subject: Re: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 17, 2005 12:25:49 PM PDT
I'm not sure if I'm saying this right. But didn't some authors want us to remember them by their poetry, works, not by making shrines to them? I think it is in a Yeats poem that he says he will live forever through his poetry. I'm still half asleep and haven't read that poem in a while so forgive me if I didn't say it right.
Jennifer Schofield
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From: NHardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 17, 2005 1:33:32 PM PDT
Jennifer,
I believe the Yeats poem you are thinking of is "Under Ben Bulben," his famous injunction to Irish poets as to the subjects they pursue and in which he sets forth how he'd like to be remembered and where he wishes to be buried (specifically, near the ancestor whose epitaph reads, "Horseman, pass by!"). Similarly, the inscription on the tomb of Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul's who is buried in its crypt, reads in Latin, "If you seek his monument, look around you." It is indeed the work that counts and what we should remember any author by. . .but I'm sure no author would be insulted by the thought of a monument to his or her memory being built!
Paul Niemeyer
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From: medway_man@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 17, 2005 10:09:51 PM PDT
If memory serves, Dickens didn't want any statues of himself to be built. For a bad example of a place being devoted to an author, come to Rochester. Every other shop has a silly Dickensian name. It must be the only city where you cannot buy a CD or a pair of spectacles, and for several years, even basic groceries. The irony is he never even lived here, but in the less picturesque Chatham. Sorry, I know it's not directly comparable to the particular church in Dorset. Rant over.
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From: sschofi404@pickens.net
Subject: Re: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 18, 2005 8:24:26 AM PDT
And this also, the authors would probably want us reading their works instead of "sitting at their graveside" so to say. For this 5 week summer term I'm in now, I'm taking a class on the Romantic authors, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelleys. I even have to read Frankenstein in this short time. I'm still an undergrad, senior though, and I've noticed these authors don't have the "pessimism" that Hardy does. That may be because the Romantics aren't living in a war time. And their themes are different also. But did anyone know that Mary W. Shelley's father, William Godwin is credited with writing the first "mystery story"? I learned that in my 3 week "Mystery Novel" class in May.
Jennifer Schofield
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From: NHardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: The St. Mary's Church digging
Date: June 18, 2005 9:40:18 AM PDT
Jennifer,
In actuality, the Romantics did write during war time--specifically, the times of the French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic wars. Many of the early Romantics, such as Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge believed that the French Revolution signalled that a similar event would happen in the UK and that it would usher in an era of Reason and democracy. That the Revolution took a bloody and horrific turn and that Great Britain was soon pulled into war with France and French allies were events that left many of them disillusioned. Even the later generation of Romantics, such as Byron and Percy Shelley, held on to the hope that a cleansing revolution would come to the UK and they often registered their disgust at the times. P. B. Shelley's "England in 1819" is a savage digest of everything that he saw was wrong in his homeland, beginning with a mad, blind king and ending on a note of hope that working men would rise up; and his "Men of England" is a stirring ballad to workers in the aftermath of the Peterloo riots.
As for pessimism, Byron had it with plenty to spare. One of the cantos of _Childe Harold_ contains a visit to the Waterloo battlefield, where Byron muses that all the blood spilt there was spilt for nothing--a battle fought to rid Europe of one tyrant simply resulted in keeping the same old tyrannical system in place. And certainly nothing registers Byron's pessimism--or perhaps cynicism is a better word--than this poem:
"When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of his neighbours;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on the head for his labours.
To do good to Mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for Freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged, you'll get knighted."
To bring this around to Hardy, I think you may find that the Romantics had a good deal of influence on Hardy's thought. Shelley's view of Nature in "Mont Blanc" is radically different from Wordsworth's and, I believe, anticipates Hardy's; Shelley's Nature is a non-rational, non-sentient system that moves forward, growing over and outlasting both man and man-made structures, leaving only Itself.
Anyway--too much thought on this subject. I'm teaching a seven-week course on Shakespeare right now, and my thoughts should be there!
Best,
Paul Niemeyer
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From: sschofi404@pickens.net
Subject: Re: The St. Mary's Church digging (and other stuff)
Date: June 18, 2005 12:40:47 PM PDT
Hi,
Forgive me I'm only a 32 year old undergrad who will someday be a professor, after being a career student. Maybe I was thinking of the early Romantic themes. Of how the Romantics are "skipping over" the 18th century before them, and trying to get back to the greater poets of the century before that. They're "revolting" against the 18th century's intelligence, empiricism, and etc. I've read Byron and some of the later ones, but only in survey classes 8 years ago or so. But one major theme my professor is telling us is about the Fall and Redemption of Man. So far we've done Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, all of which make numerous references to Milton's "Paradise Lost" Of how the early Romantic poets are saying we can have that Redemption through Nature and Imagination. I think I'm getting that right. But we'll get to Byron on 6-23 for 4 days, then Hermans, the Shelleys, and then Keats. Anyway sorry that didn't have much to do with Hardy, I'm just trying to understand it all and work on a couple of incompletes from the Spring semester, one of which has to do with Hardy. Good grief I'll be glad when I get my tonsils out so I won't be sick so much and have to miss. Least I do have understanding professors.
Jennifer Schofield
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