St Pancras, Middlesex
| St Pancras | |
| Middlesex | |
|---|---|
 St Pancras New Church, Euston Road. | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | TQ305825 |
| Location: | 51°31’34"N, 0°7’4"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | London |
| Postcode: | WC1 / NW1 |
| Dialling code: | 020 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Camden |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Holborn and St Pancras |
St Pancras is an urban parish at the edge of Bloomsbury in Middlesex, close to the edge of the City of London. The area of the ancient parish extends nearly four miles in a north-south axis, between Islington in the east and Marylebone and Hampstead in the west, taking in such places as Camden Town, Kentish Town, Gospel Oak, Somers Town, King's Cross, Chalk Farm, Dartmouth Park, the core area of Fitzrovia and a part of Highgate.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the ancient parish had been divided into 37 ecclesiastical parishes, including one for the old church, better to serve a rapidly growing population. There are currently 17 Church of England parishes completely contained within the boundaries of the ancient parish, all of which benefit from the distributions from the St Pancras Lands Trust, and all in the Diocese of London.
History
St Pancras Old Church
- Main article: St Pancras Old Church
St Pancras Old Church stands on Pancras Road in Somers Town, behind St Pancras railway station. Until the 19th century it stood on a knoll on the eastern bank of the now buried River Fleet.
The church, dedicated to the Roman martyr St Pancras, or @Pancritus, gave its name to the parish. The church is reputed to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Britain; however, as is so often with old church sites, it is hard to find documentary or archaeological evidence for its initial foundation.
One tradition asserts that the church was established in the year 314, in the late Roman period. There is little to support that view, but it is notable that to the south of the church was a site called The Brill, believed at the time to have been a Roman Camp. The Brill was destroyed during the urbanisation of the area, without any archaeological excavation to assess its age and purpose. The church is certainly very old; it is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and there is evidence to suggest it predated Domesday by several centuries.
A chapel of ease was subsequently established at Kentish Town to supplement the main parish church, which was replaced by a new building in 1822: St Pancras New Church. The new church stands on the south side of Euston Road. After it was built, the Old Church, by then dilapidated, continued in use but was reduced to the status of a chapel of ease. Most of the fabric of the Old Church building dates from a subsequent Victorian restoration.
Pre-urban period
In the Middle Ages it had "disreputable associations", and by the seventeenth century had become the "'Gretna Green' of the London area". On that account Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson alludes to the area frequently in his plays. The expression "Pancridge Parson" arose in this period for a minister who will "perform suden or irregular marriages". It was a rural area with a dispersed population until the growth of London in the late eighteenth century.
Urbanisation
In the 1790s Earl Camden began to develop some fields to the north and west of the old church as Camden Town.[1] About the same time, a residential district was built to the south and east of the church, usually known as Somers Town. In 1822 the new church of St Pancras was dedicated as the parish church. The site was chosen on what was then called the New Road (now Euston Road) which had been built as London's first bypass. The two sites are about half a mile apart. The new church is Grade I listed for its Greek Revival style; the old church was rebuilt in 1847. In the mid-19th century two major railway stations were built to the south of the Old Church, first King's Cross and later St Pancras. The new church is closer to Euston station.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about St Pancras, Middlesex) |
References
- ↑ Richardson.
- Fran C. Chalfant (1 July 2008). Ben Jonson's London: A Jacobean Placename Dictionary. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0-8203-3291-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=sPLExnmXvCYC&pg=PA136..
- Brigadier E. A. James, British Regiments 1914–18, London: Samson Books, 1978, ISBN 0-906304-03-2/Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2001, ISBN 978-1-84342-197-9.
- Mathieson, David (2016). Radical London in the 1950s. Stroud, UK: Amberley. ISBN 9781445661032..
- Richardson, John: 'Camden Town and Primrose Hill Past' (1991) ISBN 0-948667-12-5.