1. Hardy's biographical relationship to the mid-century restoration movement is complicated. Though his autobiography makes no mention of it, Hardy never altogether stopped his restoration work. He served as an advisor to several church restoration projects after abandoning his architectural career, and during 1893–94—while writingJude the Obscure—he was in charge of the restoration of West Knighton Church (seeHardy,Architectural Notebook22,30–31).
2. For a comprehensive collection of materials related to Hardy's work with the SPAB, including letters he wrote on its behalf, seeC. J. P. Beatty,Thomas Hardy: Conservation Architect.
3. This view predominated until the late 1970s—for an overview, see the introduction toMerryn Williams'sThomas Hardy and Rural England. This is, more or less, the default position for Hardy criticism that Raymond Williams complicates in his classicThe Country and the City(197–200).
4. SeeO'Malley;Radford200–25;Rogers. Julian Wolfreys essentially concurs, though he imagines a positive deconstructive power in the eruption of this Gothic past; seeThomas Hardy(1–30) andDickens to Hardy, 1837–1884(193–252).
5. For an extensive history of the movement, seeJames White'sThe Cambridge Movement. White emphasizes the important distinction between the Oxford Tractarians' focus on doctrine and the Ecclesiologists' focus on architectural correctness and ritual practice (20–24);Hardy, however, does not seem to observe this distinction.