London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead.
Story time. History time.
And here, a church bell tolls.
So much death.
And so much life in the midst of it.
Or perhaps I should say, because we’re talking about London, so much life in the midst of all that death.
The thought came to me while pondering the fate of a tree.
Which is not where I expected to find myself a few days ago.
The chain of events began with an email from a London Walks regular, Caroline Evans, writing from what she describes as steamy Houston, Texas.
Caroline had recently been on Robert Hulse’s Brunel walk. While talking to Robert she mentioned that she was planning to visit St Pancras Old Church. Robert had a favour to ask.
Would she check on the Hardy Tree?
The Hardy Tree was one of London’s curiosities. One of those odd little sights that somehow managed to be both famous and hidden at the same time. It stood in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, surrounded by remarkable old gravestones. Dozens of them. Stacked against it. Piled up round it.
Anyway, Caroline dutifully went to investigate.
And reported back.
The Hardy Tree was gone.
Not moved.
Not fenced off.
Gone.
There are now some carefully placed bushes where it once stood.
Which sent me off in pursuit of the story.
And what a story it turned out to be.
Not really the story of a tree at all.
The story of a churchyard.
One of the oldest churchyards in London.
Indeed, one of the oldest Christian sites in Europe. A Saxon altar dating from around the year 600 was found there.
Think about that for a moment.
Fourteen centuries.
Fourteen centuries of London life.
Fourteen centuries of London death.
Fourteen centuries of London stories.
No wonder the place feels haunted by memory.
The Hardy Tree got its name from Thomas Hardy.
Yes, that Thomas Hardy.
Before he became one of England’s greatest novelists he was a young architect’s assistant. In the 1860s he found himself involved in the construction of St Pancras Station and the Midland Railway.
There was a problem.
The railway was coming through.
And the churchyard was in the way.
Graves had to be disturbed. Human remains had to be moved. Headstones had to be rearranged.
The public was outraged. Questions were asked in Parliament. Part of the scheme had to be abandoned.
The story that grew up was that young Hardy supervised the rearrangement of the gravestones around an ash tree.
Hence the Hardy Tree.
Though recent research suggests the tree itself may have come later.
The story may not be quite true.
But myths sometimes tell us truths even when they get the details wrong.
And besides, Thomas Hardy wasn’t the first great writer to be associated with this place.
Charles Dickens got there first.
Think of Jerry Cruncher in A Tale of Two Cities.
By day Jerry’s an odd-job man in front of Tellson’s Bank at No. 1 Fleet Street.
By night Jerry’s a body snatcher. Though you mustn’t call him a body snatcher. He takes offense if you do. He says, “don’t called me a body snatcher, I’m a resurrectionist.”
A body snatcher.
He tells his young son, Jerry Junior, that he’s going fishing.
One night the boy follows him to St Pancras.
The fishermen are carrying spades.
Before long they get a bite.
A coffin emerges from the earth.
The terrified boy flees into the night.
And then Dickens performs one of those pieces of magic that only Dickens can perform.
Young Jerry becomes convinced that the coffin is chasing him.
Hopping after him.
Following him through the streets.
Bumping up the stairs behind him.
Climbing into bed with him.
Dropping heavily onto his chest.
Death pursuing life.
The dead refusing to stay dead.
And there’s another literary presence here.
Mary Wollstonecraft is buried in the churchyard.
Her daughter was Mary Shelley.
The author of Frankenstein.
Which somehow feels entirely appropriate.
A churchyard full of graves.
A terrified boy imagining a coffin springing to life.
And nearby the family connection to literature’s most famous revenant.
Life and death intertwining once again.
The remarkable thing about St Pancras is that it keeps accumulating stories.
Dickens left one there.
Hardy left one there.
And so, in a very different way, did Charles Chilton.
Mary’s parents’ ashes are scattered in the churchyard.
Her father was the legendary BBC producer and writer Charles Chilton.
A King’s Cross Cockney.
Orphaned by the First World War.
Raised by his grandmother.
A fourteen-year-old BBC messenger boy who rose through the ranks to become one of the great figures in British broadcasting.
The creator of Journey into Space.
The driving force behind Oh What a Lovely War.
The Telegraph once described him as “the one true genius the BBC ever produced.”
Charles knew this churchyard long before any of those achievements.
He played here as a child.
A local boy growing up in the neighbourhood.
The churchyard was part of his London.
Many years later, after retiring from the BBC, he guided for London Walks.
Our Sunday morning Hampstead walk.
Right up until he was eighty-seven.
And when his ashes were scattered in St Pancras, his son Antony said something I’ve never forgotten.
“Dad grew up a Londoner, always loved London, and now he’s eternally part of London.”
A beautiful sentiment.
And a true one.
But there’s another memory from that day.
We were all there.
Two generations of the family.
And somehow all of us literally had a hand in scattering the ashes.
Including the youngest grandchildren.
Some of them were very small.
Too small, perhaps, to understand exactly what was happening.
They took their handfuls of ashes and flung them with delight.
With excitement.
With high spirits.
With joy.
Which was somehow exactly right.
Here we were in an ancient churchyard.
Surrounded by graves.
Surrounded by memories.
Surrounded by death.
And there was life everywhere.
The Hardy Tree has fallen.
The gravestones remain.
The church remains.
The stories remain.
Dickens remains.
Hardy remains.
Mary Shelley remains.
Charles remains.
The tree is gone.
The stories endure.
So much death.
And so much life in the midst of it.
Or perhaps, because we’re talking about London, so much life in the midst of all that death.