It's been another extremely busy day – and my evening session has only
just started!
Today we filmed the Libera Me film: our ninth for the
Space and I was lucky enough to have Abbie from the choir as our presenter. She was brilliant; seemingly up for trying anything, which included
delivering one piece whilst actually holding the camera, Blair Witch style.
We filmed at St Pancras Old church, which has to be one of
the most interesting in London. Once a parish church by the river
Fleet on the marshy swampland north of London, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the future
Mary Shelley planned their scandalous elopement sitting on one of the graves. In
the mid 19th century it suddenly found itself surrounded on all
sides by railway lines as London expanded tenfold, and the area established
itself as the perfect terminus for trains arriving in the capital from the
expanding North.
A young architect called Thomas Hardy (who would later
become a very famous writer), was given the task of excavating an area of the
graveyard which had been sold to Midland Railways. His men took all the graves
that they were forced to remove and placed them in a meticulous circle around
the foot of a tree. The tree spent the next 150 years weaving its roots around
the graves, creating an astonishing piece of art; man and nature working hand in
hand.
The louchifixion: Abbie reclines on the cross
The graveyard is also the location of the tomb of the famous
architect Sir John Soane; that’s the guy who collected all sorts of Roman and
Egyptian ephemera which are displayed in his former house at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Soane designed his own mausoleum, and it remains (along with Karl Marx’ grave)
one of only two grade one listed graves in London. Why is the grave so
important? Because it provided Sir Giles Gilbert Scott with the inspiration for
the design of the iconic red phone box!
From King’s Cross we went to Upper Street (to film an actual
red phone box) where we met Jem from the choir, wiped out after taking the red
eye from New York this morning. Our final destination was Stoke Newington, more specifically Abney Park cemetery to film the charming, quirky and hugely gifted poet, Isabel
White, who has written a set of poems about the Magnificent Seven Cemeteries in
London. The book they're in is called Death and Remebrance. Go buy a copy and support an entrepreneureal creative mind!
All in all, a very good day... and the sun shone almost
constantly.
Pepys had a lie-in this morning – and justified this by
working late into the evening. He travelled to Deptford, did a bit of Navy
business, had dinner with Sir William Penn, stuck his nose into the business of
finding his brother a suitable marital match, working for hours by candle light, and went to bed, late, after
playing the lute. All in a day’s work, really.
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