Max Gate - and Poundbury? Seeking A Sense of History; Thomas Hardy; A.L. Rowse

In his introduction to "The West and English History" (1949),  A. L. Rowse writes:

"I remember John Masefield telling me that when Thomas Hardy was building his house, Max Gate, just outside Dorchester, he wasn't happy about it because it was new and raw and without history. Then they found that the ground was partly on a Roman cemetery, and brooches and fibulae and all sorts of things came up when they were excavating - then it was all right, and Hardy was contented."