'Here in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere below is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes of that hue, whilst the horizon beyond is of deepest ultramarine.'
from  Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'

At Hazelbury Bryan (Nuttlebury), Middlemarsh (Marshwood), High Stoy and Minterne Magna (Little Hintock) you can see the disappearing landscape described in The Woodlanders (1887). There are places that have barely changed since long before Thomas Hardy’s time, and that have a bearing on the contrasts produced in Hardy’s writing.