St Pancras, Camden

Nowadays the identity of the district situated to the north-​​east of Bloomsbury and formerly a metro­politan borough extending as far north as Highgate

St Pancras Old Church

St Pancras’s name is an angli­cisation of the Latin St Pancratius, a third-​​century martyr who was beheaded at the age of 14. Usage of the misnomer ‘St Pancreas’ is a sure sign of a newcomer to London or an overzealous spellchecker.

The old church (shown right) that was dedicated to St Pancras may be of seventh-​​century origin and was probably rebuilt in the twelfth century. However, its parish­ioners subsequently migrated northwards to Kentish Town and the church was left isolated in the fields.

From the late Middle Ages the locality was often known as ‘Pancridge’, a name that acquired connotations of mockery: the victor in a local archery contest was dubbed the Earl of Pancridge and a pompous character was consequently sometimes called a Pancridge earl. An ‘old Pancridge’ was a term of contempt.

St Pancras Old Church survives on Pancras Road but a neo-​​Grecian church of the same name was built in 1822 on the corner of present-​​day Euston Road and Upper Woburn Place to serve the streets that were spilling out of Bloomsbury at this time.

This was never an area of the highest class and it deteri­orated with the arrival of the railway termini, the first of which was Euston in 1837. North of the Euston Road conditions became partic­ularly bad in the parts of Somers Town that were not taken for station buildings or goods yards.

Inside St Pancras Chambers

St Pancras station and the Midland Grand Hotel were built from 1865 to 1874 by Sir George Gilbert Scott for the Midland Railway Company. Scott was a builder of churches and a restorer of great cathedrals and this experience shows in his work here. The hotel’s interior (shown on the right during its recent restoration, on an Open House weekend) is arguably even more magni­ficent than the façade (which is shown below in Street View).

The hotel was converted to office use after 1935 and renamed St Pancras Chambers. The offices were closed in the mid-​​1980s when the building was deemed non-​​compliant with fire regulations.

Next door, the St Pancras goods depot was replaced in the 1990s by the British Library (see the page on Somers Town).

British Rail tried in vain to gain permission to demolish the Midland Grand Hotel and it remained empty for many years, while the platforms behind were underused. Finally, a new use was found for the station and from 2007 it became St Pancras Inter­na­tional, the London terminus for the Channel Tunnel rail link, while retaining its existing services and gaining a Thameslink connection.

Most of the hotel has recently been returned to its original purpose, with the addition of some loft-​​style apartments. Inside the station a bronze statue of Sir John Betjeman honours his role in the campaign to save the complex from demolition.

The Museum of London has a wonderful evocation of the station’s cathedral-​​like qualities in John O’Connor’s evening view from Pentonville Road, painted in 1884.

The dramatist George Bernard Shaw was a St Pancras vestryman and councillor from 1897 to 1903, during which time he worked to establish the first free ladies’ public lavatory in the borough.

Postal districts: WC1 and NW1
Population: 13,818 (St Pancras and Somers Town ward, 2011 census)
Station: Eurostar, East Midlands, South­eastern, First Capital Connect (Thameslink), London Under­ground services shared with King’s Cross (zone 1)
Further reading: Alastair Lansley et al., The Trans­formation of St Pancras Station, Laurence King, 2011
Website: St Pancras Inter­na­tional station

 

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