Literary London

St Pancras Old Church

Mary Wollstonecraft's grave, where her daughter met Shelley, in the churchyard of the Hardy Tree.

In the storyGravesGo insideFree

Also in Sacred London.

One of the oldest Christian sites in England, and the churchyard is where the sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin met Percy Shelley in 1814 at the tomb of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft; the future author of Frankenstein is said to have learned to read by tracing the letters on the stone. The Wollstonecraft tomb still stands, though the bodies were moved to Bournemouth in 1851. In the 1860s the young Thomas Hardy, then an architect's assistant, oversaw the clearing of graves for the railway and had the headstones stacked around an ash tree that grew through them; the Hardy Tree fell in 2022 but the stones remain. Sir John Soane's tomb, which gave Giles Gilbert Scott the shape of the red telephone box, is here as well.

Where

Pancras Road, NW1 1UL

Nearest station

London St. Pancras International · 4 min walk

Hours

Hours from the page that lists them, checked 5 September 2026.

Closes between 15:00 and 17:00 depending on concerts; the churchyard is open until dusk.

NearbyLiterary London

• Rimbaud and Verlaine, Royal College Street6 min walk
• Word on the Water6 min walk
• British Library7 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Camley Street Natural ParkOutdoors & Nature2 min walk
• Gasholder ParkScience & Engineering3 min walk
• Coal Drops YardShopping3 min walk

See more nearby listings

Submit a correction for this listing.