St.Pancras Gardens is surely the quirkiest park in London full of quiet corners and eccentric memorials.
In the middle sits St.Pancras Old Church, one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Europe. The surrounding park is what remains of the old churchyard cut through from 1863 by construction of the Midland Railway into St.Pancras Station. The exhumation of the graves was overseen by Thomas Hardy, then a young architect, who placed many of the headstones in a circular pattern around an ash tree, whose roots now entangle the stones around what is known as Hardy's Tree.
When the churchyard was re-opened as a public park in 1877 the Burdett-Coutts Sundial had been added as a memorial to all those whose graves had been exhumed and moved elsewhere.
Among the graves that were left in situ are those of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft and the monument designed by Sir John Soane for his wife. The latter will look very familiar to most people because it was the inspiration for Gilbert Scott's design of the K2 red telephone box.
All this for free in a lovely park with a beautiful fence and gates all recently restored with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund.

191 Saint Pancras Way, London NW1 9NH
+44(0)20 7424 0724
Google map: bit.ly/mSFivF

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