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Notes in italics from London 4: North by Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner (2001)
Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Sir John Soane's family tomb in St Pancras Old Church Gardens. Looks like the traditional British red telephone box? No coincidence, it influenced Giles Gilbert Scott's winning design for telephone boxes installed from 1926 onwards. He happened to be a trustee of Sir John Soane's Museum.
Outstandingly interesting monument by Sir John Soane to his wife, who died in 1815, extremely Soanesque, with all his originality and all his foibles. A delicate marble monument beneath a heavy Portland stone canopy. Four piers with incised Ionic capitals; a pendentive vault carries a shallow drum encircled by a tail-biting snake (symbol of eternity), with a pineapple-shaped finial. The tomb is surrounded by a low balustrade with distinctive acroteria, which also encloses the steps down to the burial vault. Sir John Summerson suggested that the tomb can be interpreted as civilization (the monument) within eternity (the surrounding canopy).

About Sir John Soane on Wikipedia

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