Stinsford

Stinsford is a village in south west Dorset, England, one mile east of Dorchester. The village has a population of 346 (As of 2001), 13.5% of dwellings are second homes.

The village churchyard contains the grave of Poet Laureate Cecil Day Lewis (died 1972), as well as the burial place of the heart of Thomas Hardy (died 1928), the novelist and poet, alongside the grave of his first wife Emma Lavinia Gifford who died in 1912. Stinsford is the original 'Mellstock' of Hardy's novels Under the Greenwood Tree and Jude the Obscure.