Little Cressingham Mill, Norfolk

This place has special memories for me. It always makes me think of that lovely poem by Hardy: When I set out for Lyonnesse.

 

As a young apprentice architect, Hardy visited St Juliot, Boscastle in Cornwall to supervise the restoration of its dilapidated church. Here he meet his future wife Emma Gifford (his 'West-of-Wessex-Girl').

 

On his return from the parish, people noticed two things about him — a new glow in his eyes and a crumpled piece of paper sticking out of his coat pocket. That paper, it is recorded in one of his biographies, contained the draft of a poem.

 

 

When I set out for Lyonnesse,

A hundred miles away,

The rime was on the spray,

And starlight lit my lonesomeness

When I set out for Lyonnesse

A hundred miles away.

 

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there

No prophet durst declare,

Nor did the wisest wizard guess

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there.

 

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes,

All marked with mute surmise

My radiance rare and fathomless,

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes!

 

Thomas Hardy

Done