Young Architect Thomas Hardy's Tree

In nearby St. Pancras Old Church cemetery is a towering, fenced-in ash tree whose base has grown up and over headstones placed there by Thomas Hardy. A plaque near the tree explains that "before turning to writing full time," Thomas Hardy "studied architecture in London from 1862-67.  Hardy would have spent many hours in St. Pancras Churchyard overseeing the removal of bodies and tombs from the land on which the railway was being built."  The job perhaps inspired The Levelled Churchyard wherein one verse says..."We are late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaims in fear, 'I know not which I am!'"