Comments on: At Old St Pancras Churchyard

By: Eleanor Jane

Eleanor Jane — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:53:04 +0000

I visited the church and grounds in 2025; was particularly interested in The Lodge (which I believe is mislabelled in the photos above as The Vestry). My great grandmother lived for a short while in The Lodge in 1898 with her sister Hannah (wife of the head gardener, James Vickery). The building is now used for storage I was told. Would love to have seen inside.

By: Stephen Beckett-Doyle

Stephen Beckett-Doyle — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 20:26:19 +0000

I recall the tombstone of the ‘last survivor of the Black Hole’, I came across it prior to writing the above poem. There were many notes and drafts, and initially it was just general interest in St Pancras Churchyar on my part from which the poem arose. I probably spent too much time there! I found this –

John Mi…
Struggles on the verge of invisibility
The cupful of air finally taken away
Last survivor from the Black Hole of Calcutta
The history of our times
Wipes the stone
Blank

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 04:40:06 +0000

Part 2. So much to see and absorb, impossible in a short trip. At 82 now, it seems another trip is not in the cards. But some memories are better than no memories. I have the shorter book on Pepys and the book has more meaning even with a abbreviated journey.

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 04:34:03 +0000

From the west coast of Canada I visited London in 2016. My father was born in Kensington in 1901.
I had a special priced trip for 10 days focused on aviation museums. I tired of them in 5 days so decided to look over London, particularly Pepys areas. What joy, but I was not very well organized.

By: Gillian Tindall

Gillian Tindall — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 16:13:15 +0000

What must now be 40-odd years ago, when I was researching a book (`The Fields Beneath’) on the way St Pancras rural parish was eventually absorbed in ever-expanding London, I wandered quite a bit in the church-yard. At that time a tombstone commemorating someone who had been imprisoned in the `Black Hole of Calcutta’ (1756) as a young man – and presumably survived to live to old age back in peaceful St Pancras – was decipherable. I have looked for it several times in the last 2-3 years (the gardens being my favourite walking place during lockdowns) but have not found it again. I suspect that 40 more winters have worked to semi-obliterate its message, for the present
Vicar, Father James, being young enough to be my son, has no knowledge of it. Anyone else recall it?

By: Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 11:41:32 +0000

Yet another valuable piece of work, thanks.

The church and its surroundings are worthy of a few hours meanderings. The collection of 19th century municipal buildings say so much about the social history of the period.
The Fleet runs [just] under the churchyard – accounting for the sogginess underfoot at times.
The link with Hardy is fascinating. What a job he was given!

By: achim

achim — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:43:52 +0000

To Stephen Beckett-Doyle: an incredible and unexpected poem. I like it very much and and I try to trace its exact meaning. — I would probably have similar impressions in St Pancras Churchyard, but would fail to put them into such great words …

Love & Peace
ACHIM

By: Stephen Beckett-Doyle

Stephen Beckett-Doyle — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:05:34 +0000

Hello,

I lived near St Pancras in the late 1970s and 1980s and would often walk and sit there. I wrote this poem in 1981.

Saint Pancras Garden

Evergreen bushes display the gift of light

but the older trees cast bare shadows,

their leaves and history wait for a riper sun.

Spring wind falters, thickens, striking

their upper limbs, delivering fat grey pigeons

toward a man who appears to be throwing

about scraps of food, or fag ends and stones.

Some gravestones have been huddled together

others hidden, for open space, daffodils,

hyacinths, cut grass, a children’s playground.

An ash tree rises from a pyramid of headstones,

They resemble the crippled, blind, possessed,

leaning toward a life that’s discarded them,

dead supplicants their names and dates erased.

The children’s enclosure is tarmacadamed,

the usual steel and plastic instruments

arranged inside: slide, swing, see-saw

roundabout. Occupying the centre, a small

cracked stone tomb dithering inwards,

surrounded by a cage of black spiked railings

through which a small girl pokes a stick.

Three starched young nurses accompany

two sexless geriatrics in wheelchairs,

shrivelled heads bob on bulging totems,

wrapped and swaddled against the cold

which children who occasionally break

from the playground’s cage do not feel,

the children are singing or screaming.

A black man hurries through, strapped

in a railwayman’s uniform, stooped,

the beginning of curvature of the spine,

his black skin does not reflect the sun,

a cigarette hangs from his closed mouth.

The wind breathes inflating leaves to green

teasing the nose with an antiseptic tang.

By: achim

achim — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 07:10:08 +0000

Another wonderful place in London to spend hours — if you can find the time to do so in London! 🙂

Love & Peace
ACHIM

By: Lewis Jones

Lewis Jones — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 05:47:39 +0000

Buried:
Johann Christian Bach (d 1782)
Carl Friedrich Abel (d 1787)