The statue is by the side of the road on the grass verge. It has an inscription 'THOMAS HARDY 1840-1928'. It was sculpted by Eric Kennington and erected in 1931.
There are some great details on the website below about the statue:
'Hardy's statue was created by Eric Kennington and was unveiled by Hardy's friend James Barrie on the 2nd September 1931. Its location on the roundabout at the top of High West Street (B3150) and The Grove (B3147) is set upon old roman walls close to the very centre of Dorchester, which he knew so well imortalised in his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. Recently, there has been some debate in the local newspapers as to whether this should be moved to a more central position within Dorchester.
Eric Henri Kennington was born in Chelsea, London in 1888 and was the son of the portrait artist and member of the New English Art Club,Thomas Kennington.
During WWI Kennington joined the 13th London Regiment where he fought on the Western Front. Badly wounded he was sent home in June 1915. In August 1917 Eric was invalided out of the British Army and became employed by the War Propaganda Bureau to produce pictures of the Western Front. After the war he also designed many war memorials. He was a highly regarded stone carver, whose achievements were ranked in the 1920s and 1930s alongside those of his contemporaries Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Frank Dobson.
His later work is characterised by public architectural sculpture carved directly into the exterior surface of a building, and his public commissions include five relief panels for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford upon Avon (1930-2); models/plans for the Pan American Columbus Memorial Lighthouse, Santo Domingo (1930-4); and the stone relief for the Harold Cohen Memorial Library, University of Liverpool (1937-8). In 1936-9, Kennington carved his masterpiece: a recumbent effigy of T.E. Lawrence ('of Arabia'), with whom he was friends since 1920.
During the WWII.Kennington was an official war artist confining himself chiefly to producing pastel portraits of sailors and airmen.
In the last fifteen years of his life, he concentrated on producing works for the interiors of churches.
Eric Kennington died in 1960.'
Wikipedia describes Thomas Hardy:
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'Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the naturalist movement, several poems display elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.
While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial gain, during his lifetime he was much better known for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, which earned him a reputation as a great novelist. The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex (based on the Dorchester region where he grew up) and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.
Hardy's poetry, first published in his fifties, has come to be as well-regarded as his novels and has had a significant influence over modern English poetry, especially after The Movement poets of the 1950s and 1960s cited Hardy as a major figure.'
Also included in the gallery is a plan drawn by Thomas Hardy of St Peter's church when he was aged just sixteen. This is located inside the church.