Hardy's gravestone tree with hundreds of tombstones
In central London, in the cemetery of the old church of St. Pancras, hundreds of old tombstones gathered around the trunk of a huge ash tree. Someone calls this place "The Tree of a hundred tombstones", someone "The Tombstone of Thomas Hardy". Let's look into the history of this unusual installation, which excites the imagination.
The old St. Pancras Church in London is known for its gravestone tree. Once the church had a large cemetery, but during the Industrial Revolution in the 1860s, the laying of a railway was required and it had to pass through this cemetery.
The church gave the land to the cemetery for the construction of the railway and something had to be done with the graves. This work was entrusted to the young Thomas Hardy, by the way, in the future he became a famous writer. Thomas decided to treat the ashes of the deceased with dignity and reburial the remains. The remains were reburied in another cemetery.
Tombstones were expensive to transport and Hardy built tombstones around the then young ash tree. In the process of growth, the tree absorbed several tombstones, putting roots between the stone slabs, merging with them into a single organism.
Now this tree is a local landmark and a place of Thomas Hardy's memory.