It seems but the other day this old suburban church was pleasantly surrounded by green fields and quiet hedgerows; but now the mammoth magnitude of this great city—the modern Babylon—has stretched itself in this direction, as in all others; and St. Pancras’ fields, with their rows of goodly elms, and pleasant meandering footpaths leading to the then village church, exist only as a pleasant memory. Surrounded by houses, the old church seems out of place, and might be passed as little worthy attention. Still are there facts worth noting in its history, and that of the locality in which it stands—and associations which may serve to prompt more than a passing thought. The whole of this neighbourhood is linked by tradition with a deadly fight between the Britons and their invaders, when seventy thousand men were said to have been slain at “Battle-bridge.” Modern fashion has attempted to get rid of the old Saxon name which serves to keep this struggle in remembrance, by christening the locality in courtly guise, King’s Cross—erecting, too, in the centre of the road an architectural hybrid, the use of which could never be discovered, unless built there for omnibuses to run against. All round Battle-bridge traces of entrenchments have been found, running up close to the old church; some of them, called the Brill, occupied the pen of the learned and ingenious Stukely. During the civil wars, also, this spot again became the seat of armed entrenchments, and the Royalists and Parliamentarians occupied the ground which more than a thousand years earlier had been trodden by the armed legions of Rome, and the comparatively defenceless Britons.
Of the church itself, an old writer, Norden, who describes things as they were in London before the great fire, says, ” Paneras church standeth all alone as utterly forsaken, old and wether-beaten, which, for the antiquity thereof, it is thought not to yeeld to Paules in London. About this church have bin many buildings, now decayed, leaving poor Paneras without companie or comfort, yet it is now and then visited with Kentishtowne and Highgate, which are members thereof; but they seldom come there, for they have chapels of ease within themselves; but when there is a corpse to be interred, they are forced to leave the same within this forsaken church or churchyard, where (no doubt) it resteth as secure against the day of resurrection as if it laie in stately Paules.” Thus it seems that when the “stately Paules” stood in all the greatness of Gothic architecture where the Grecian St. Paul’s of our time now stands, old Paneras church was then old and weather-beaten in its antiquity.
It is a quaint old Gothic pile, built of stones and flints, and certainly as old as the thirteenth century. Now that it is coated with plaster, it has lost a good deal of the forsaken, wether-beaten, decaying look of which the old chronicler speaks; albeit more than five centuries have passed away since its foundations were laid. It is small, and consists of a nave and chancel, having, at the west end, a low tower, and “dome-like roof.” In the old records of St. Paul’s (Lib. L) is a visitation, which took place in 1251, wherein this church is described as having “a small tower, a good stone font, and a small marble stone, ornamented with copper, to bear the pax.” Weever speaks of a ” wondrous antient monument,” by tradition, said to belong to the family of Gray, of Gray’s Inn. The church and its now well-thronged graveyard have been long noted as the burial-place of such Roman Catholics as die in London. Almost every tomb bears a cross, and the initials of Requiescat in pace. May they rest in peace! It has been assigned as a reason for this, that in the south of France still stands another such old church, dedicated to the same saint, in which masses are said for the souls of all the dead interred at St. Pancras in England. Here also, it is said, hangs the last bell which tolled for mass in our country.
Like all our old churches, its walls still strive to rescue from oblivion the names of such as moulder in their neighbourhood. Old Pancras has its monuments. Some families connected with property in the neighbourhood of course find place:—A “London merchant,” also, who witnessed the “Great Fire ;” “Daniel Clarke, Esq., who had been cook to Queen Elizabeth;” Samuel Cooper, a miniature painter, who was intimate with the author of “Hudibras,” and whose pencil has left us likenesses of the most celebrated statesmen, wits, and beauties of his stirring age. A portrait of Cromwell is his chief work. His manner approaches closely to that of Van-dyke, and his pictures are in great esteem all over Europe, fetching great prices. Cooper was related to Pope, too; his wife was sister to Pope’s mother.—The churchyard, likewise, has its monuments: Woodhead, a great champion of the Romish faith, and by some reputed the author of “The Whole Duty of Man;” Leoni, a Venetian, architect to the Elector Palatine, who died here just on a century ago; also a Count of the Holy Roman empire, de Haslang, Envoy from the Elector Palatine to the court of England. To the list the last few days has added another name, in that of Dr. Kenny. Of the worthies associated with the church, those of Paley and William Sherlock may be remembered. They were both prebends of Pancras. Close by is a chapel, and behind it a tomb erected by Sir John Soane, the donor of the Soane Museum; it is another object worthy the notice of the passer-by.
The Illustrated London News, London, England, Week Ending October 29, 1842
