What lies sleeping beneath?

Posted on 7/4/09 by Abi Siri (No comments)

by Guest Editor Milly Cundall

I’ve lived in Camden the majority of my 29 years and although I’m aware of the history that lies sleeping beneath our feet, I’ve never really looked beyond the surface.

St Pancras old church instantly transports you back to Camden circa nineteen hundreds and what strikes you as you walk about taking in the familiar names on the headstones, is that something about Camden has always been a magnet for great thinkers, campaigners and authors who’ve always flocked to its bohemian boarders.

It’s incredibly hard to conjure up the atmosphere and sense of history through words so I’ve included a few pics in the hope it will inspire you to go and explore yourself. It’s a surprisingly peaceful and beautiful place to take a turn.

The old Church is one in a parish of four, which are all dotted around the borough, and it is thought to be one of Europe’s most ancient sites of worship dating back to possibly the twelfth century. The church used to sit a stones throw from the River Fleet, which has long since gone to ground, and has been restored and rebuilt approximately three times since. I was incredibly curious to see the inside of this little church and soak up some of the historic atmosphere exuded by its grounds. I was also hoping to gain some more insight or see if I could discover more historic treasures and my curiosity was greeted by a warm welcome and a guided tour.

I knew that Mary Shelley’s (the author of Frankenstein) own mother Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was buried here. She was a controversial and inspiring character who strove tirelessly for the rights of women back in the 1800s (‘A Vindication of the rights of women’) and died after giving birth to Mary Shelley. I had also been told that Mary Shelley used to spend time in the churchyard as a girl and in later life and that this could, possibly have been the inspiration behind her gothic novel Frankenstein.

[caption id="attachment_1566" align="aligncenter" width="525" caption="Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin"] Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin [/caption]

As you explore more familiar names present themselves, Charles Dickens’ schoolmaster, William Jones, is buried here (Dickens refers to Jones in David Copperfield)

William Jones

On your left as you walk into the ground is an amazing gothic memorial sundial dedicated to the Baroness Burdett Coutts. A descendant of the Coutts family, which we know today for banking, she was a Victorian philanthropist determined to rid London of its slums and was one of the richest women in Britain in the nineteenth century. Hailed as ‘Queen of the poor’ and ‘Nursing-mother of the Church of England’, she was the first woman to be given a peerage in 1871.

: Burdett Coutts memorial

The churchyard is also the site of the only other Grade 1 listed monument (the other one being Karl Marx’s in Highgate cemetery). The Soane mausoleum was designed by Sir John Soane, the architect of the Bank of England, and was erected after his wife’s death in 1816 and entombs himself and his son.

: Soane Mausoleum

Walking towards the back of the cemetery I stumbled across something that took my breath away and was my favourite discovery: The ‘Hardy tree’. Thomas Hardy studied architecture and worked in London under Arthur Bloomfield in the 1860s before becoming an author. With the planned development of the Midlands Railway through part of the original churchyard in the 1860’s, the church commissioned this Covent Garden based architect to exhume the graves on the original part of the churchyard and move them. This unfavourable task was passed onto a young Mr Hardy and this amazing Ash Tree is the result. The tree looks like a roller deck of moss-covered headstones embedded into the roots with past and present merging into each other.

The 'Hardy tree'

'Hardy tree'

After an hour of exploring, I stumbled back out onto St Pancras road and was instantly jolted back to the present day but having seen a glimpse of the past, seemingly unaffected by recent local developments. The old Camden lives on, go and discover it!

What lies sleeping beneath?

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