I’m off to Dorset at Easter. Mainly for a conference but, as it’s a beautiful part of the country and as I’m off work, it would be a wasted opportunity if I didn’t tag on a few days’ holiday.
Thinking of Dorset has made me think of Thomas Hardy.
Dorset, if you don’t know, is Thomas Hardy country. I’ve never actually read any Thomas Hardy even though a couple years ago, when I was last in Dorset, I visited the two former homes of his that are open to the public and decided I really should read some of his books.
This time I’m taking a couple of his books along with me and I’m definitely (maybe) going to read them.
Planning my Dorset trip and what I’ll read whilst I’m there has reminded me that I still haven’t got round to writing any posts about what I did when I visited London back in October.
Why would planning a Dorset trip remind me of a London trip?
Because there’s a really quirky Thomas Hardy connection of course!
For this London trip I was based in the King’s Cross area. As I didn’t have much time I decided to focus on exploring close to my hotel. King’s Cross has undergone a massive regeneration programme and is unrecognisable to the place I remember from my days living in London.
When I was doing my research I came across a place that has been there long before any regeneration (about 1700 years before), yet I’d never heard of it. Of course I had to add it to my list of things to see in the King’s Cross area.
That place is the St Pancras Old Church and graveyard and the reason it so interested me is because of the Hardy Tree.
St Pancras Old Church
St Pancras Old Church is thought to date all the way back to the 4th century which makes it one of Europe’s oldest sites of Christian worship. The current church was built in the 11th or 12th century, though it’s been ruined and rebuilt several times since then. Although little remains of the original church, a bit of the wall in the Nave has an exposed section of Norman masonry.
The church is quite interesting and worth a look, but it’s the graveyard surrounding it where you’ll want to spend most of your time.
The Hardy Tree
The graveyard is leafy and parklike – a pleasant place to sit for a while in peace from the surrounding busy roads. It was actually opened to the public as a park in 1877.
However, back in the 1860s when it was still just a graveyard, plans were made for the Midland Railway to be built and for the tracks to run straight out of the back of the new St Pancras Station. That an ancient Christian site and (more recent) burial site was in the way didn’t stop those determined Victorian engineers. They ploughed right though the graveyard with nary a thought until people started to complain about the sight and smell of corpses which had been brought to the surface. The Bishop of London stepped in and demanded they be treated with a little more respect.
The job of overseeing the removal of the dead was given to architect, Arthur Blomfield. He didn’t fancy dealing with the unsavoury task of supervising the removal of the bodies himself, so passed the responsibility on to his apprentice, an unknown young man called Thomas Hardy.
Hardy will have spent many hours in the churchyard and it is thought that it was on his instruction that the gravestones were densely packed in concentric circles around an old ash tree.
There is an alternative theory that the stones were just dumped randomly in a heap and over time an ash seed took root and the tree grew up through the stones pushing them out into circles. Tree or no tree, it’s pretty certain that the stones being placed there was down to Thomas Hardy.
It certainly makes an interesting sight to see so many stones together in this way with the roots of the tree growing round them and grasping them, kind of how I imagine Angkor Wat to be, but on a smaller scale.
This wasn’t the only time that bodies have been moved in this cemetery. Earlier in the 19th Century the graveyard was a known as a spot used for ‘fishing’ by dubious characters out to make a quick buck. ‘Fishing’ was a term for body snatching and tomb robbing.
Charles Dickens referred to this in his 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities. St Pancras Old Churchyard was where one character, Roger Cly, was buried and where another, Jerry Cruncher, did his ‘fishing’.
How unsavoury were people in the past, you might be thinking, disturbing bodies like that. It would never happen now.
Well, if that is what you were thinking, you would be wrong. We might not have bodysnatchers these days but bodies still get moved to make way for train lines. Over 60,000 bodies from a graveyard behind Euston Station (a few minutes from King’s Cross and St Pancras Stations) are being moved to Surrey to make way for the new HS2 trainline.
Further along the line about 3,000 bodies are being moved from a mediaeval church in Stoke Mandeville.
As well as the Hardy Tree there are a few other notable tombs and gravestones that are worth seeing whilst you’re here.
The Burdett-Coutts Memorial Sundial
The Burdett-Coutts Memorial Sundial is a gothic style fountain with a sundial on its spire. It’s named for Baroness Burdett-Coutts who was known as a great philanthropist in the 19th Century. She was one of the richest women in England and used her money in pursuit of good works. Known as ‘Queen of the Poor’, she was the first woman to be given a peerage and was buried in Westminster Abbey in honour of her charitable endeavours. She funded the fountain as she thought there should be a memorial to the graves that had been moved in the 1860s.
The Beatles were photographed sitting on a bench near the memorial by Don McCullin for one of their albums.
The Soane Tomb
Have you been to the Soane Museum in Holborn? It’s one of my favourite museums. The museum is the former home of Sir John Soane who was an architect and collector of all sorts of weird and wonderful things. His basement contains things like a real Egyptian sarcophagus for example.
Soane designed some magnificent structures in London such as the Bank of England building. It was only to be expected then, that when his wife died, he would design a rather extraordinary tomb to honour her. The tomb later provided the inspiration for some other rather iconic structures. Go on … what does it remind you of?
Yep, telephone boxes. The traditional red phone boxes you used to see everywhere across Britain were designed in 1924 by Giles Gilbert Scott who supposedly got the idea for their design from the Soane tomb.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Grave
Mary Wollstonecraft, the radical 18th Century feminist writer, has her tomb in this graveyard. Wollstonecraft is best know for The Vindication of the Rights of Women which was published in 1792 and is another book I haven’t read.
Her daughter, Mary Shelley, apparently planned her elopement with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley whilst visiting her mother’s grave. Mary Shelley is the author of Frankenstein which is yet another book I haven’t read.
Coincidentally, Mary Shelley’s grave is in Bournemouth which is another Dorset connection for this London burial ground.
Charles Dickens’s Schoolmaster’s Grave
On this tomb the plaque reads
Charles Dickens’s Schoolmaster at Wellington House Academy Hampstead Road. The original of ‘Greakle’s School’ in David Copperfield and ‘our school’ in ‘Reprinted Pieces’
Apparently Dickens didn’t like his schoolmaster, William Jones, very much. He did visit this graveyard though as he used both the church and the graveyard for inspiration in A Tale of Two Cities (you guessed it – another book I haven’t read).
And back to Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy never wrote directly about his experiences with the dead in St Pancras Old Churchyard, but he did write this poem which I’ll leave you with.
The Levelled Churchyard
“O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!
“We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
‘I know not which I am!’
“The wicked people have annexed
The verses on the good;
A roaring drunkard sports the text
Teetotal Tommy should!
“Where we are huddled none can trace,
And if our names remain,
They pave some path or porch or place
Where we have never lain!
“There’s not a modest maiden elf
But dreads the final Trumpet,
Lest half of her should rise herself,
And half some local strumpet!
“From restorations of Thy fane
From smoothings of Thy sward
From zealous Churchmen’s pick and plane
Deliver us O Lord! Amen!”
If you want to learn more about the poem The Thomas Hardy Society has a good analysis.
The St Pancras Old Church and Burial Ground can be found on Pancras Road about a five minute walk from the back of St Pancras Station.
Books I’ve added to my reading list since going to see the Hardy Tree in the Old St Pancras Burial Ground
- Everything by Thomas Hardy
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Had you heard of the Hardy Tree before? Do you like visiting old burial grounds? What’s the best one you’ve been to? And which Thomas Hardy book do you suggest I start with? Share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below.
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