St Pancras Gardens

Tombstones round the Hardy Tree

A reader's tip in the Guardian includes the gardens of St Pancras Old Church in a list of the UK's most eccentric attractions. It seems an odd choice to me because the gardens are full of interest and well worth a visit on any day.


The interest in not just historical (such as the tombstones round the Hardy Tree) or architectural (such as the St John Soane mausoleum); it is also geological as shown by a web site devised by scientist in UCL's Department of Earth Sciences. (Use the drop-down menu from 'St Pancras Gardens' in the top navigation bar to get to the geological details.)

John Soane mausoleum

The gravestones feature a variety of types of rock. The Soane mausoleum, for example, is made of marble surrounding by a balustrade consisting of Portland limestone. The tall Burdett-Coutts memorial is a sundial made of two colours of granite, limestone and sandstone. 


Gravestones can be hundreds of years old so they provide a useful means of observing and measuring the weathering of different types of rock. Weathering of rocks can be caused by: chemicals - acids in rain; physical changes - such as water freezing and expanding and by living organisms - such as the growth of lichens. 

Reflex at the Wellcome Trust

HQ of the Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust has been in the news because its bid to take of the Olympic Park after the 2012 games has been rejected by ministers. The Trust spends about £600 million each year to fund biomedical research. This makes it the biggest funder of research in the UK after the government.

The Trust is also a major patron of artists that explore scientific ideas and imagery. This is symbolised by the architecture of its headquarters building, the special displays and sculpture inside the building within the vast atrium as well its window displays. 

It was the new window display that caught my eye from the top of a passing 390 bus. The display is called 'Reflex' and it responds to passers by and traffic in the Euston Road. The swarming behaviour of the installation is based on an algorithm with mimics the collective behaviour of large groups of creatures such as birds or ants.

London Overground

Train arriving at Camden Road

The blogger at London Reconnections has recently written a series of three posts about the past, present and future of the London Overground. So far TfL has scored a big hit with the way that it has brought to life the tired old services that used to run on the North London Line and other services that now make up the new network. Another blogger, Diamond Geezer, has documented the improvement in the frequency of trains thanks to the new service.

Overground crossing the Canal

The Class 378 Capitalstar trains were made by Bombadier. This is the company based in Derby that recently failed to be selected as the preferred bidder to supply the new trains for the Thameslink service.

The Overground will make a complete circuit of London once the orbital route to Clapham Junction to Surrey Keys is complete. However trains will never make a complete circuit.

Paddington Station

The most recently decorated 'span 4' at Paddington

A trip to Exeter and back this last weekend reminded me that Paddington is one of the pleasanter London station for travellers. This is thanks to brilliant engineering in Victorian times and recent refurbishment  which was initially carried out according to a design by the architect Nicholas Grimshaw. Network Rail publishes a mini-guide to the features of the station.

Polished limestone has brightened the platforms while travellers can wait and shop in the Lawn - an area that was long ago station master's garden.

Paddington was built using the same techniques as the Crystal Palace. It opened in 1854 just three years after the Great Exhibition.

Brunel at Paddington

The statue near the entrance on platform 1 celebrates the engineer, Brunel, who worked with the architects and designers Matthew Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones to create this spectacular station. 

Already much of the redecorated ironwork has been blackened by the soot from the diesel locomotives. However the line of arches in 'span 4' is showing the glory of the colour scheme because it has only recently been unveiled. 

Meanwhile the next engineering challenge is the design and construction of an underground addition to Paddington as part of Crossrail.