Meadowview Cottage Far From the Madding Crowd

For many years we have featured a strapline on our website that suitably sums up how it feels when guests stay in our luxury 5-star-gold Meadowview Cottage “Far From the Madding Crowd”. For those of you not familiar with this, it is the title of Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel, first scribed in 1874.

An English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was no stranger to North Cornwall having lived in a neighbouring parish in 1870 on a mission to restore the St Juliot parish church, Boscastle, just a few miles from Meadowview Cottage. In fact, he met and fell in love with a lady, Emma Gifford, here whom he married in 1874. Following her death in 1912, Hardy revisited many of the places linked to his courtship of Emma in North Cornwall.

With such passion in his soul, it is no surprise that he wrote Far from the Madding Crowd. A tale that starts with a triangular love story between characters with such wonderful names as Bathsheba Everdene, (an independent and headstrong farm owner) Gabriel Oak (shepherd) and William Boldwood (a wealthy bachelor) and then for good measure add Sergeant Francis “Frank” Troy (a sheep farmer) whom Bathsheba eventually marries but later finds that he is a gambler, not fit to farm and doesn’t love her. Instead he only has eyes for former servant Fanny Robin, who sadly suffers an untimely demise. To Bathsheba’s rescue (or so he thinks) comes Boldwood, shooting Troy in front of her…. Without giving too much of the plot away, Gabriel is still very much in love with Bathsheba and unusually for Thomas Hardy, there is a rare happy ending to his tale, one you can either read about in a copy of his novel or watch on the big screen when the latest adaptation of this wonderful story is released on Friday 1st May.

There have been three previous films released based on Hardy’s novel (1915, 1998 and 2013) and now on Friday 1st May we wait with anticipation to view the newest film release of this romantic drama, “Far from the Madding Crowd” starring Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, and Juno Temple.   With this line up it promises to be the best yet!

When staying at Meadowview Cottage, a trip to the parish church of St Juliot is recommended; it stands in an isolated location above the valley of the River Valency (Boscastle) at grid reference SX 129 912