After visiting St. Juliot church, I soon found St. Juliot rectory above.
The lane leading down to the rectory was beautifully gladed which offered a welcome respite from the strong wind:
The rectory is now an upmarket-looking B&B:
To get down to it, you have to cross over an old cattle grid:
In 'Discovering Hardy's Wessex', Anne-Marie Edwards (1978/1982: 51) reveals that besides meeting his wife, Emma, at the rectory, Hardy wrote 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' in the sheltered rectory garden, and that the seat "where he proposed to Emma, is still in the garden". Thus, I can't help but think that the seat facing the reader, left below, may be the seat in question:
After I'd explained my interest in Hardy, the landlady of the B&B very kindly let me have a look round the rectory garden, and I got to see some of the intricate paths where Hardy must've courted Emma:
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