Before he became a novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy was an architect. As a young man he studied under Arthur Blomfield, an architect based in Covent Garden.At this time the Midland Railway was building its independent line from Bedford to London, with a new terminus at St Pancras. The line entered this new terminus across part of St Pancras Churchyard and, says The Victorian Web:
I took my own photograph of the tree and stones last Saturday.Blomfield was commissioned by the Bishop of London to supervise the proper exhumation of human remains and dismantling of tombs. He passed this unenviable task to his protegé Thomas Hardy in. c.l865. Hardy would have spent many hours in St. Pancras Churchyard . . . overseeing the careful removal of bodies and tombs from the land on which the railway was being built.
The headstones around this ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) would have been placed here about that time. Note how the tree has since grown in amongst the stones.
This episode inspired Hardy's The Levelled Churchyard:
It's a grimly comic poem, but no wonder he was a melancholy man after this experience."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!'"
I quite often seem to catch sighs and hideous groans, half stifled when I arrive at St. Pancras in the morning - but that's mainly the passengers, realising that we've got another day's work ahead of us.
ReplyDeleteMore seriously, I do often think of Hardy when I see that churchyard.
I work really close to that and have done for over a year and didn't even know it was there.
ReplyDeleteI'll have a look at lunchtime tomorrow.
Cheers,
Bob
Came across the Hardy tree a few months ago, out exploring of a lunchtime - what a beautiful, if slightly macabre, thing!
ReplyDeleteHere's my pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katy_bird/3921860491/in/photostream/
This is a wonderful thing , I just saw it on igoogle .
ReplyDeletesome of you might like this: story of how the tree came to be. sort of.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.trolleybooks.com/bookSingle.php?bookId=228
Thanks for sharing 'The Levelled Churchyard' - I wrote a post about the Hardy Tree on <a href="http://thestreettree.com/2011/12/01/old-st-pancras-hardy-tree/>The Street Tree</a> last week and may have to retrospectively include the poem!
ReplyDelete