"St. Michael's Church, Stinsford":

Stinsford is the tiny hamlet that, together with the Higher and Lower Bockhamptons, constitutes "Mellstock" in Hardy's Wessex. Here his grandfather was a founder of the church "quire," the group of musicians who played for services. Florence Hardy writes in The Early Life of Thomas Hardy that the senior Hardy "got together some instrumentalists, himself taking the bass-viol as before, which he played in the gallery of Stinsford Church at two services every Sunday from 1801 or 1802 till his death in 1837, being joined later by his two sons, who, with other reinforcement, continued playing till about 1842...." (Chapter I)

      (Circa 1850)

  On afternoons of drowsy calm
   We stood in the panelled pew,
Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm
   To the tune of 'Cambridge New'.

  We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,
   The clouds upon the breeze,
Between the whiles of glancing at our books,
   And swaying like the trees.

  So mindless were those outpourings! --
   Though I am not aware
That I have gained by subtle thought on things
   Since we stood psalming there.

This grave, in the Stinsford churchyard, contains the remains of both Hardy's wives, Emma Gifford Hardy and Florence Dugdale Hardy. Hardy's heart was buried here as well, the rest of his body having been interred in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Samuel Sewall (1990)