Published: 11 August, 2011
by DAN CARRIER

THOMAS Hardy’s spell as an exhumer of graves in St Pancras churchyard, where the author spent time as a young man overseeing a gang of labourers who dug up the soil and shifted the dead to new resting places, has become the centrepiece of writer Iphgenia Baal’s debut novel.

In 1865, Hardy had moved to London to study architecture in Covent Garden and was given the job of moving graves for the Midland Railway Company, who were building St Pancras station.

Iphgenia (pictured) grew up near Grays Inn Road and she revealed King’s Cross has always held a fascination for her.

“It is my stomping ground, so setting a book in these parts just made sense for me,” she says.

And the fact that the cemetery, where she hung out as a teenager, had a link to a literary giant gave her the starting point she wanted for her story.

The novel begins in the 1800s and then leaps across decades, with Iphgenia writing of the people Hardy worked with in the mid-1800s to the people of the area in the present day.

“When I came across the story of Hardy working here, I couldn’t believe it,” she says.

“It seemed extraordinary that Hardy should have done this.”

• The Hardy Tree by Iphgenia Baal. Trolley Books, £15