#1 "King George's Statue, Weymouth":

"The scene was the corner of Mary Street in Budmouth-Regis, near the King's statue, at which point the white angle of the last house in the row cut perpendicularly an embayed and nearly motionless expanse of salt water projected from the outer ocean.... Dick and Smart had just emerged from the street, and there on the right, against the brilliant sheet of liquid colour stood Fancy Day...." (Part 3, Chapter 1)

Hermann Lea writes, "The present school-house [in Lower Bockhampton] may have been built since the date of the story, though it bears no great unlikeness to the building from which the Mellstock school-house was drawn." (Vol. II, 61)

Kay Kearsey, who has done research on the school, writes: "Bockhampton School was opened in 1848 and Thomas Hardy, then aged 8, was one of its first pupils. The school was built on land donated by the owner of the Kingston House estate - Mr Francis Martin. The Vicar of the parish of Stinsford, Rev. Arthur Shirley was very active in promoting the idea of a village school and Mrs Julia Martin, who is said to have taught Thomas Hardy to read at her home before the school opened, also took a great interest in the school. Thomas Hardy left the village school in 1849 to attend another in Dorchester."