The story of Thomas Hardy’s Tree provides hope for all aspiring authors.
Photograph by David Edgar
Thomas Hardy wasn’t always a writer. Before he penned Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, he worked as an architect. In the 1860s, his company was commissioned to ensure the smooth passage of a new railway that would run through St. Pancras graveyard in London.
The young Hardy was given the unpleasant task of exhuming bodies and moving gravestones to make way for the railway.
But where to put them?
He came up with the ingenious solution of placing the stones around an ash tree in a part of the graveyard that would be left untouched by the new train line. Overtime, the tree grew, spreading outwards, incorporating gravestones into its being, almost a triumph of live over death.
I’d been looking forward to visiting the Hardy Tree, having first read about it in Atlas Obscura. Unfortunately, fungus-ravaged and storm-damaged in 2022, the tree fell, leaving the gravestones crowding around a few saplings.
Still, St. Pancras Churchyard is like an oasis amid the craziness of St. Pancras and Kings Cross. And even if the tree did fall, we can all take heart from the fact that, once, even a great writer like Thomas Hardy had to do a mundane job as he dreamed about his true calling…
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