PIN The Hardy Tree

Life and death

In the cemetery of the church of St Pancras visitors can see an ash tree encircled with hundreds of gravestones.Layered (practically on top of one another) the gravestones have been placed here by classic novelist Thomas Hardy. Over the years the tree has absorbed many of the headstones, creating a beautiful juxtaposition of life and death.

History

In the 1860's, the rail network of London was in an important expansion, and one of the lines had to cross the cemetery of St Pancras. To oversee the sensitive task of exhuming the remains and reburying them at another site, the Bishop of London contracted an architectural firm who assigned the unpleasant work to a young employee - Thomas Hardy. In the following decades he would publish many classic novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles. After reburying the bodies, Hardy’s solution to the question of what to do with the hundreds of headstones was to place them in circles around an ash tree.

TripTide Thoughts

Despite the fact Thomas Hardy was definitely more talented in writing as to the disposition of the tombs, the tree absorbing the tombs shows at the end a poetic and surrealist image.

How to get there

Take the Piccadilly or Victoria lines to King's Cross St. Pancras and take a brisk 10 minutes.

Owner

sebastian soler

Hi I am Sebastian - a french student on an internship in London for TripTide. I love music, movies and history - and London. My Home Town is Nice in France. ...