Sometime in a Churchyard

Sometime, in a Churchyard is a collaborative project, which began in 2020, between artist Charlotte Harker and poet Louise Warren. The poems and drawings are inspired by many visits to the Old St Pancras churchyard in London, and through the changing seasons, their observations of the small ancient church with its surrounding buildings and wildlife all took on different meanings-symbolic, historical, literary, and personal. A place of worship since the 4th Century Old St Pancras Churchyard has associations with Mary Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, whose stone memorial is at the site. In the 19th century, Thomas Hardy was employed by the railway to oversee the removal of human remains to make way for a goods yard for the railway, and the famous ‘Hardy Tree’, where he arranged the gravestones, still stands. Today, the churchyard is surrounded by busy roads, underground rivers, the former Victorian workhouse, St Pancras Hospital and the Coroner’s Court, but within its walls are many old gravestones and monuments, imposing trees, plants, and a rich array of wildlife. The poems and drawings are arranged like a journey through the churchyard. The drawings do not illustrate the poems but rather respond to them and in some instances, the poetry was created in response to the drawings which reflects the fact that the working process between artist and poet is more in the manner of a conversation.