Complex sentence: Emma Gifford met the writer Thomas Hardy in 1870 when he was working as an architect and commissioned to prepare a report on the condition of the parish church of St. Juliot, near Boscastle in Cornwall.
Split into simpler sentences: Emma Gifford met the writer Thomas Hardy in 1870 when he was working as an architect. Hardy had been commissioned to prepare a report on the condition of the parish church of St. Juliot, near Boscastle in Cornwall.