Burdett-Coutts Memorial Sundial

The Burdett-Coutts Memorial Sundial stands in the churchyard of Old St Pancras, a quiet corner of London’s Borough of Camden. It was built between 1877 and 1879 at the request of Baroness Burdett-Coutts to honour those whose graves were disturbed when the Midland Railway cut through the old burial ground. The churchyard had once served St Giles-in-the-Fields, where many Catholics and French émigrés were laid to rest. After the railway works in 1865, the site was cleared and reopened as a public garden in 1877. The memorial itself is a tall Gothic tower crowned by a sundial, its pink Shap and grey Cornish granite columns rising above four inscribed marble plaques. The structure carries the names of more than seventy people whose graves were lost, including the Chevalier d’Éon, the sculptor John Flaxman, and the architect Sir John Soane. Designed by George Highton, it features relief carvings by Signor Facigna, with busts of saints and allegorical figures such as Morning and Night. Four marble panels bear the Beatitudes from St Matthew’s Gospel and a religious poem. The base is set on red Mansfield sandstone steps decorated with mosaic panels of stylised flowers. Iron railings surround the square enclosure, guarded at each corner by stone lions and dogs, the latter possibly modelled on Greyfriars Bobby. Inside the enclosure, the garden remains a peaceful place with the tomb of Sir John Soane nearby. The sundial’s shadow marks the hours against Portland limestone, while the names on the plaques recall a lost history of London. The monument itself is Grade II* listed, as is the surrounding garden, and the old church of St Pancras is also Grade II* listed. Visitors find a place of quiet reflection where Victorian craftsmanship meets the memory of those once buried here.