Various - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 546, May 12, 1832

ST. PANCRAS (OLD) CHURCH.

This humble village fane is situated to the north of London, somewhat more than a mile from Holborn Bars. Persons unacquainted with the site, may hitherto have considered it as part and parcel of this vast metropolis: but, lo! here it stands amidst much of its primitive, peaceful rusticity.

Pancras is still, by courtesy, called a village , though its charms may be of the rus-in-urbe description. It derives its name from the saint to whom the church is dedicated: 1 1 St. Pancras was a young Phrygian nobleman, who suffered death under the Emperor Dioclesian, for his zealous adherence to the Christian faith. it was called St. Pancras when the Survey of Domesday was taken. The parish is of great extent. Mr. Lysons states it at 2,700 acres of land, including the site of buildings. It is bounded on the north by Islington, Hornsey, and Finchley; and on the west by Hampstead and Marybone. On the south it meets the parishes of St. Giles's in the Fields, St. George the Martyr, St. George, Bloomsbury, and St. Andrew's, Holborn. 2 2 Lysons's Environs, 4to. vol. ii. part ii. On the east it is bounded by St. James's, Clerkenwell. Kentish Town, part of Highgate, Camden Town, and Somer's Town, 3 3 The parish extends in this direction to the foot of Gray's Inn Lane, and includes part of a house in Queen's Square. are comprised within this parish as hamlets. Mr. Lysons supposes it to have included the prebendal manor of Kentish Town, 4 4 Anciently Kentistonne, where William Bruges, Garter King at Arms in the reign of Henry V. had a country-house, at which he entertained the emperor Sigismund. or Cantelows, which now constitutes a stall in St. Paul's Cathedral. Among the prebendaries have been men eminent for their learning and piety: as Lancelot Andrews, bishop of Winchester, Dr. Sherlock, Archdeacon Paley, and the Rev. William Beloe, B.D. well known by his translation of Herodotus.

It would occupy too much space to detail the progressive increase of this district. When a visitation of the church was made in the year 1251, there were only forty houses in the parish. The desolate situation of the village in the latter part of the sixteenth century is emphatically described by Norden, in his Speculum Britanniæ . After noticing the solitary condition of the church, he says, "yet about this structure have bin manie buildings now decaied, leaving poore Pancras without companie or comfort." In some manuscription additions to his work, the same writer has the following observations:—"Although this place be, as it were, forsaken of all; and true men seldom frequent the same, but upon devyne occasions; yet it is visyted by thieves, who assemble there not to pray, but to wait for praye; and manie fell into their handes, clothed, that are glad when they are escaped naked. Walk not there too late." Newcourt, whose work was published in 1700, says that houses had been built near the church. The first important increase of the parish took place in the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road.

"Pancras Church," says Norden, "standeth all alone, as utterly forsaken, old and wether-beten, which, for the antiquity thereof, it is thought not to yield to Paules in London." It is of rude Gothic architecture, built of stones and flints, which are now covered with plaster. Mr. Lysons says, "It is certainly not older than the fourteenth century, perhaps in Norden's time it had the appearance of great decay; the same building, nevertheless, repaired from time to time, still remains; looks no longer 'old and wether-beten,' and may still exist perhaps to be spoken of by some antiquary of a future century. It is a very small structure, consisting only of a nave and chancel; at the west end is a low tower, with a kind of dome." 5 5 The visitation of the church in the year 1251, mentions a very small tower, a good slope font, and a small marble stone ornamented with copper to carry the Pax . Mr. Lysons speaks of the disproportionate size of the church to the population of the parish; but since his time another church has been erected, the splendour and size of which in every respect accord with the increased wealth and numbers of the parish.

The church and churchyard of Pancras have long been noted as the burial-place of such Roman Catholics as die in London and its vicinity. 6 6 Strype, in his additions to Stowe, says, the Roman Catholics have of late effected to be buried at this place. Many of the tombs exhibit a cross, and the initials R.I.P. ( Requiescat in pace ), which initials, or others analogous to them, are always used by the Catholics on their sepulchral monuments. Mr. Lysons heard it assigned by some of that persuasion, as a reason for this preference to Pancras as a burial-place, that masses were formerly said in a church in the south of France, dedicated to the same saint, for the souls of the deceased interred at St. Pancras in England. After the French revolution, a great number of ecclesiastics and other refugees, some of them of high rank, were buried in this churchyard; and in 1811, Mr. Lysons observed that probably about 30 of the French clergy had on an average been buried at Pancras for some years past: in 1801 there were 41, and in 1802, 32. Mr. Lysons's explanation of this preference to Pancras by the Catholics is, however, disputed by the author of Ecclesiastical Topography , who observes that a reason more generally given is, that "Pancras was the last church in England where mass was performed after the Reformation."

In the chancel are monuments of Daniel Clarke, Esq. who had been master-cook to Queen Elizabeth; and of Cooper the artist, whose style approached so near to that of Vandyke, that he has been called Vandyke in miniature: he taught the author of Hudibras to paint; his wife was sister to Pope's mother.

In the churchyard are the tombs of Anthony Woodhead, 1678, who was in his day, the great champion of the Roman Catholic religion, and was reputed to have written the Whole Duty of Man; Lady Slingsby, whose name occurs as an actress in Dryden and Lee's plays, from 1681 to 1689; Jeremy Collier, 1726, the pertinacious non-juror, who repressed the immoralities of the stage; Ned Ward, author of the London Spy, 1731; Leoni, the architect, 1746; Lady Henrietta, wife of Beard, the vocalist, 1753; Van Bleeck, the portrait-painter; Ravenet, the engraver, 1764; Mazzinghi, 1775, leader of the band at Marylebone Gardens, and father of Mazzinghi, the celebrated composer; Henry and Robert Rackett, Pope's nephews; Woollett, the engraver, 1785, to whose memory a monument has been placed in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey; Baron de Wenzel, the celebrated oculist, 1790; Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin, author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1797; the Rev. Arthur O'Leary, or Father O'Leary, the amiable Franciscan friar, 1802; Paoli, the patriotic Corsican, 1807; Walker editor of the Pronouncing Dictionary; the Chevalier d'Eon, 1810, of epicene notoriety; and Packer, the comedian, 1806, who is said to have performed 4,852 times, besides walking in processions; Edwards, professor of Perspective, 1806; Scheemakers, the statuary, 1808.

In the Beauties of England and Wales , it is stated that 23 acres of land belong to the church; and the great increase of buildings renders these of considerable value; though it is not known to whom the church is indebted for this possession.