A tree in London, named after Dorchester-born author Thomas Hardy, has fallen in stormy weather conditions.

The ash tree, which stood in the Old St Pancras Churchyard in London, was surrounded by dozens of headstones that were placed at its base by Hardy, while engineering works were being undertaken on a railway line.

Before he became known as a novelist and poet, Hardy trained as an architect in Dorchester and was employed at the offices of Arthur Blomfield, in Covent Garden, London.

The firm was commissioned to dig up a large number of graves from Old St Pancras cemetery to make way for what is now the Kings Cross–St Pancras station complex.

Hardy was tasked with the mass exhumation and reburial, and arranged the headstones close together in a circle formation, with the tree in the centre.

The church's website called the tree a "monument to the railway encroachments of the 19th century" but it became a prominent image of life among death.

It fell this week having said to have been recently damaged in stormy conditions.