Thursday, February 05, 2015

August 2013: The Old St. Pancras Church and the Hardy Tree

 

 

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After seeing the St. Pancras Old Church, we turned into the churchyard

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lovely set of gates.

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with a nice easy to follow map

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some funny green mushrooms…

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there’s the church…lovely.

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And then there’s the Burdett-Coutts Memorial Sundial. Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906) was one of the great Victorian Philanthropists who tried to fix the issue of the slums and gave very generously. She modelled the dog in one of the corners after her own little collie dog. How nice.

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walk on

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a lovely little circular flower bed.

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I found this grave very sad and moving…no lettering, moss covered, dusty and dirty, nobody knows who is buried here

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the trees talk to me…

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almost like a desk and chair?

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looks like an envelope?

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A cafe and this plaque on the right..

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very peaceful in this sun dappled churchyard

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Snail trail and iron rails.

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Sometimes wandering around old graveyards, you come across the most fascinating monuments. This is a monument to Mary Wollstonecraft, mother to Mary Shelly (Frankenstein's author) who is now considered to be one of the Founding Feminist Philosophers. She is best known for her brilliant book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. Few centuries back, she was fighting for the rights of women. A thoroughly fascinating life sadly cut short too early. —

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And here’s the grave of John Soane, amazing man, one of the greatest architects of British Fame. the shape of the grave was used in the Iconic telephone books dotted around London.  His house is now a museum and its just lovely to visit.

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A blue painted water fountain.

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Couple of serious crosses…

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Another view of the church.

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And here is the Hardy Tree. What? I hear you ask? well, Thomas Hardy, the famous author of Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure etc. worked as an architect before he started banging on about rural Wessex in his novels. (trivia for you, the Beatles did their photo shoot for their song Hey Jude in front of this tree..geddit?). Anyway, as an architect, he was asked to move human remains and tombs from this churchyard as the Midland Railway line was being built across part of the churchyard. So he supervised the placing of the tombstones around this ash tree...and now the tree has covered some of the closer tombstones.
Also, Charles Dickens refers to this churchyard in his Tale of Two Cities..Lots of ancient history around here.

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it was really magical to see the yard…

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somebody acting out something?

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Move over to the other side of the church, which has few more graves.

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 photo 263-IMG_5365_zpsc8441ed4.jpg another couple of views of the church

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and then we make our way out of the church.

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A green wall…

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Book ends?

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Some funky drawings…

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want to just go sailing by on the Regents Canal

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some lovely views on the regent’s canal.

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wut?

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ice used to be stored here in the dim and distant past…

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heh

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A lovely mural

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loading plaque on the floor

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A big issue seller…and I am done.

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