Lonson Neighbourhoods
St Pancras
Known for its famous railway station, St Pancras is in fact a district in central London. It was originally a medieval ancient parish and subsequently became a metropolitan borough. The metropolitan borough then merged with neighbouring boroughs and the area it covered now forms around half of the modern London Borough of Camden. The area of the parish and borough includes the sub-districts of 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.
The ancient parish of St Pancras (also known as Pancrace or Pancridge) was established in the medieval period to serve five manors: two manors named St Pancras (one prebendial, one lay), Cantlowes (Kentish Town), Tottenham Court and Rugmere (Chalk Farm). The Ancient Parishes of – west to east – Paddington and St Marylebone (in the modern City of Westminster), and St Pancras (in the modern London Borough of Camden) in 1834.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the ancient parish had been divided into 37 ecclesiastical parishes, including one for the old church, to better 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 most of which are in South Camden Deanery in the Edmonton Area of the Diocese of London.
The former River Fleet formed part of the boundary with Clerkenwell, while a tributary of it – later known as Lamb’s Conduit - formed the southern boundary with Holborn. The course of this watercourse is now marked, in part, by Roger Street (formerly known as Henry Street). The tree which gave the Gospel Oak district its name, formed part of the boundary with neighbouring Hampstead.
The boundaries of St Pancras include take in around half of the modern London Borough of Camden, including Camden Town, Kentish Town, Somers Town, Gospel Oak, King's Cross, Chalk Farm, Dartmouth Park, the core area of Fitzrovia and a part of Highgate.
St. Pancras International
Adjacent to King's Cross station is St. Pancras International, the London terminus for Eurostar services to continental Europe. Beneath both main line stations is King's Cross St. Pancras tube station on the London Underground; combined they form one of the country's largest transport hubs. St Pancras's train lines are elevated 5 metres above street level because the 19th century Metropolitan Acts prohibited the intrusion of railways inside the old ring road to the south. And, as the Regent's Canal lies to the north of the station, trains coming in on a bridge across it would not have enough space to descend to ground level before reaching the train shed. As a result, a viaduct had to be built over the canal to accommodate the train line. King's Cross station, built 10 years earlier, got round the problem with a tunnel into the train shed, but St Pancras architect William Henry Barlow decided not to mimic this neat solution.
800 columns support the platforms above the undercroft, but a very odd unit of measurement was employed in their original design. The spacing between columns was calculated to match the plans of beer warehouses in Staffordshire, meaning St Pancras's undercroft was worked out using the length of beer barrels. In the station's freight heyday, three dedicated beer trains (and even more in the brewing season) arrived from Burton on Trent daily, their boozy wares lowered into the undercroft, before being farmed out to thirsty Londoners.
Amidst the stones and pathways around St Pancras Old Church (Pancras Road), you'll find the famous Thomas Hardy Tree, named as such to commemorate one of Britain's most regarded writers. Working here in the 1860s, when the Midland Railway was being built, Hardy worked to exhume graves and clear headstones from the path. Carefully, he lay each of these around the tree in circles, creating an intricate and unique installation that remains to this day.
Also upon the site is the St Pancras Old Church, possibly one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England - dating back to the early 4th century. These days, it is a place of interest, as well as a destination for history lectures and candlelit concerts.
One tradition asserts that the church was established in AD 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 was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and there is evidence to suggest it predated Domesday by several centuries.
Click to view Spice Girls "Wannabee" music video
St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel London
This hotel is where the Spice Girls' music video for their first smash hit 'Wannabe' was filmed. A truly a truly iconic London landmark, it one of the finest examples of Victorian architecture in London. In 1862, the Midland Railway company, who ran a network of railways in the midlands, commissioned their own railway line into London. Construction finished on the new railway line and station in 1865. A competition was subsequently launched to design a hotel to double up as a grand frontage onto Euston Road.
London Canal Museum
A regional museum devoted to the history of London's canals, London Canal Museum is housed in a Victorian ice warehouse. The building was constructed between 1862 and 1863 to house ice imported from Norway by ship and canal barge. There are two preserved ice wells under the building, one of which may be viewed from the public area of the museum. The museum covers all aspects of the UK's waterways. London Canal Museum is situated in the King's Cross area of London, on the Regent's Canal.
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