The Hardy Tree, Camden, London. Wow! Whatever has happened to it?
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Situated in St Pancras Old Church, the Hardy Tree came into being in the mid 1860s, as Britain's rail system experienced extreme growth, due to industrialisation and the growing number of commuters. Rail expansion directly affected the graveyard at St Pancras Old Church, and the human remains had to be exhumed and reburied at another site to make way for the new train line.
An architecture firm was contracted to perform this sensitive task, and traditionally unpleasant work is always dumped onto the lowest employee in the pecking order. That, at the time, was Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) who would later go on to pen such classics as Far from the Maddening Crowd and Tess of the D'Ubervilles.
After the completion of the exhumations, there remained the question of what to do with the hundreds of remaining headstones. Hardy derived the solution of placing them in a circular pattern around one of the trees in a spot safe from the railway expansion. Over time the tree has absorbed many of the headstones, and offers up a kind of grotesque artistic, macabre beauty.
But is this theory correct or could something else have happened? There are a couple of alternative scenarios that I look at in this video, and I'll discuss what the fate was of this once-majestic ash tree.
Do check out this interesting tree and secluded graveyard, and check out my St Pancras Old Church blog. Remember, I will always be a writer before anything else!
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The Miss Elaineous
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