The fallen Hardy Tree came down in December 2022

FOR almost a century it was one of north London’s hidden gems, attracting photographers and history walks to a unique scene in the grounds of St Pancras Cemetery.

The “Hardy Tree” grew up between piles of disturbed graves stones over decades, its thick roots anchoring the souls of some of Camden’s forgotten dead to earth.

After eight years of “managed decline”, it fell after being irreparably damaged in a storm in December 2022, according to the council.

On Friday, a new tree commemorating the poet and writer Thomas Hardy, who oversaw 19th century works moving gravestones in St Pancras cemetery when a new railway was brought into St Pancras Station.

The new tree

Council officials said it wasn’t possible to plant a new tree that could grow up through the original pile of graves in a similar fashion, and instead a new spot had been chosen to give it the best chance to grow.

The species was chosen on advice of the Thomas Hardy Society which said there was a connection with a novel Under the Greenwood Tree and a real life beech tree in the countryside fans of the writer regularly visit each summer.

The Society’s Mavis Pilbeam said: “We have all been there at the Thomas Hardy Society and danced in the garden and accompanied by two fiddlers we do country dancing on the lawn in the sight of this great beech tree.”

There was singing and poetry recitals at the tree-planting event

After singing a song and reciting poetry, she said: “Hardy loved trees. I read somewhere that he read Milton’s poetry on the way to school. He was interested in poetry from a very early age. He could identify trees by appearance, but also the sound they made as they blew in the wind.”

Under the Greenwood Tree gets its name from a song in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, a story about a group that find a new liberating way of life away from the city and in the woods.

The tree goes into the ground and, right, Dr Tony Fincham

The remains of the Hardy Tree are still in the grounds of the cemetery, cut up into large logs for biodiversity. Explaining Hardy’s work at St Pancras, the Society’s Dr Tony Fincham said: “In 1862 he came to work as an assistant architect.  He was attached to the Church of England. One of the jobs was to build the Midland Railway out of here. The churchyard extended where the railway now is. At night, he had to supervise the moving of the graves. A pile of those graves are still there. But Hardy probably never knew the tree was there.

“The earliest photographs of the tree are about 1926, and Hardy died in 1928. Because he subsequently became well known, it became known as the Hardy Tree.”

A GP by trade, Dr Fincham added that the been drawn to Hardy’s “understanding of the human condition”, adding: “I’ve led a lot of Thomas Hardy walks in London and we also come here.”

The council said it couldn’t comment be­cause an election was coming up.