A while back I was told of a fantastic sounding tree in a church yard next to the railway lines coming out of St. Pancras station. When the railway was being built it was necessary to move a large number of graves that were in the way of the new line. The Bishop of London asked a local architect, Arthur Blomfield, to organise the exhumation and Blomfield, in turn, passed the task onto a man called Thomas Hardy. Hardy arranged that the headstones from the exhumed graves be stacked around an ash tree growing elsewhere in the churchyard, out of the way of the impending construction works. This all took place some time in 1865 and today the gravestones are still there, laid around the ash tree. The ash tree, over time, has grown large and its roots have grown in between some of the stones. It apparently it quite a striking sight.
Upon hearing this, I was definite that I wanted to see it so after a few months of procrastination I picked this weekend and marched up to King’s Cross with a couple of willing cohorts to find it. Helpfully, although information about Hardy’s tree, as it’s called, is quite thin on the web, there’s a university website for schools that has some good info along with another London site that was useful. You can even see the churchyard quite clearly nestled between the railway lines and Pancras Road.
The churchyard, “St Pancras Gardens” is a pretty peaceful place though, as in 1865, there are railway works going on all around so there’s no lack of noise. The tombstones and mausoleums and monuments are quite impressive. We spent a good hour or so wandering around and taking photos. Here’s some of what I took; mostly in black and white, as befits all gothy churchyard photos!
Hi,
What a wonderful story. I was searching for info’ on this grave stone story and your post has told me all I needed to know. Thanks.