In my mind’s eye trip to London, one scene lifts out of memory’s mist and there I walk into Old Saint Pancras churchyard, where history is in step along with my own footsteps. More than once this was a place of great visitations for instance those of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, who would visit the grave of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – and where too Percy Shelley would walk with the young Mary to visit her mother’s grave.
Over centuries other noteworthy persons have had an association with the churchyard, some of whom can be remembered by their moss speckled memorials – Sir John Soane, Johann Christian Bach to name two – that sit along the paths, guarded by the trees. And speaking of trees, there once stood one of particular majesty, a monumental support to the gravestones of many long forgotten souls of London – an ash tree that became known as the Hardy Tree. In my mind’s eye dream it still stands.
In reality though, on December 27, 2022, the Hardy Tree fell. It was named such as a recognition of the fact that the great novelist Thomas Hardy, who was an assistant architect in the 1860’s, oversaw the excavation of the old church graveyard during the building of the Midland Railway, which ends at St. Pancras Station.
So goes the story that it was his solution to find a creative way to rearrange the gravestones and thereby maintain the memory of those buried here.
However long as this old tree may survive as I once saw it in my mind, on April 12, 2024 a new tree, this time a beech, was planted to replace the Hardy Tree. It was organized by the Camden Council in London and in attendance at the ceremony were representatives of The Thomas Hardy Society.
Is it a myth that Hardy planned this arrangement for the gravestones around that old tree? According to a recently uncovered 1926 photograph there was no such tree there. At the new tree planting Mavis Pilbeam, a Hardy Society member who was there, commented in a Society article – The New Hardy Tree:
“It seems that a passing bird should probably take the credit for the casual planting some time after Hardy had completed the work. Nonetheless, the Tree in its position … came to be known as the Hardy Tree, memorialising his gruesome job, which later inspired several of his poems, serious and humorous, investing the corpses with a semblance of life.”
Even if that old Hardy Tree I saw on a visit one quiet weekday morning was a myth, it was a good one. Maybe Hardy saw an imaginary tree. In any event I can’t bring myself to look at a photo of the fallen Hardy Tree, mythical or otherwise, it is a beautiful sentiment. I am fortunate to have walked around it and touched the other huge chunky trees that were its long-time friends.
“To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature….
And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality.” Under the Greenwood Tree, 1872
