St Pancras Old Church
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- For the saint after whom this church is named, see Saint Pancras. There is a list of other places named after him at St Pancras.
St Pancras Old Church, which was known simply as St Pancras Church until St Pancras New Church was built a little over half a mile away, is believed to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in London and in England.
Documentary evidence for the early history of the church is scanty, but it is believed to have existed since A.D. 313 or 314. It was the parish church of the parish of St Pancras, which stretched from close to Oxford Street almost to Highgate. However in the 14th century the population abandoned the site and moved to Kentish Town. The reasons for this were probably the propensity of the plain around the church to flooding (the River Fleet, which is now underground, runs through it) and the availability of better wells at Kentish Town, where there is less clay in the soil. The old settlement was abandoned and the church fell into disrepair. It lost its status as the central church of the parish when St Pancras New Church was consecrated in 1822, and became a chapel of ease. Throughout the 19th century additional churches opened within the bounds of the original St Pancras parish at regular intervals, and by 1890 it had been divided into 33 ecclesiastical parishes.
By 1847 the Old Church was derelict, but as the local population grew it was decided to restore it. There are still traces of Norman masonry, but the building seen today is basically Victorian. A replacement tower was built and the building was lengthened, though it remained quite small. There have been further restorations since, particularly in 1948 following Second World War bomb damage. The building is a grade II* listed building.
The architect Sir John Soane designed a tomb for his wife and himself in the churchyard, which is now Grade I listed. Other people buried here include Johann Christian Bach and John Flaxman. There is a memorial tomb for Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin though their remains are now in Bournemouth. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley romanced the future Mary Shelley here. In the mid 19th century the writer Thomas Hardy was involved in the controversial clearance of part of the churchyard to make way for railway tracks to St Pancras station, while he was a young trainee architect. In 1968, The Beatles were photographed in the churchyard grounds, in a famous series of pictures designed to promote the single Hey Jude and the album The Beatles aka The White Album. The churchyard is the largest green space in the locality. It has some fine mature trees, and was restored in the first few years of the 21st century.
[edit] References
Camden Town and Primrose Hill Past by John Richardson (1991) ISBN 0-948667-12-5
