The Ring, Casterbridge, on the Budmouth Road (Maumbury Rings, Dorchester). Photograph and following commentary by Philip V. Allingham. 2002.
The Romans during their colonisation of the Durotriges converted this ancient British stone circle (dated to the early Bronze Age or late Neolithic period by excavations in 1908) into an amphitheatre for games and gladiatorial shows. In 1685, at the close of the Monmouth Rebellion, Judge Jeffreys ordered eighty of the rebels to be executed here. A number of significant scenes occur here in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), particularly the clandestine reunion of Susan and Michael Henchard. See chapters x, xi, xxviii, xxxv, and xlii.Denys Kay-Robinson adds:
Notwithstanding its changed environment, Maumbury must remain the grimmest spot in Dorchester, its black story culminating in 1706 [Hardy gives 1705 on p. 55] in the hideous execution of nineteen-year-old Mary Channing [wife of a Dorchester grocer, and allegedly his killer]. Hardy used this event in his poem 'The Mock Wife', and recorded some of the grislier details in his notebooks. (26) [See Thomas Hardy's Personal Writings, ed. Harold Orel, pp. 225-232.]
Daiches, David, and John Flower. Literary Landscapes of the British Isles: A Narrative Atlas. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
Kay-Robinson, Denys. The Landscape of Thomas Hardy, photographs by Simon McBride. Exeter: Webb and Bower, 1984.
Hardy, Thomas. The Mayor of Casterbridge. An Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds, Criticism. Ed. James K. Robinson. London & New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.
Lefebure, Molly. Thomas Hardy's World. London: Carlton, 1996.
The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Dorothy Eagle and Hilary Carnell. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Pinion, F. B. A Hardy Companion. New York and London: Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, 1968.
Seymour-Smith, Martin. Hardy. London: Bloomsbury, 1994.
Last modified 24 August 2002