Old St Pancras Churchyard

Graveyard in/near St Pancras, existing until now.

 HOME  ·  ARTICLE  ·  MAPS  ·  STREETS  ·  BLOG  ·  CONTACT US 
(51.53477 -0.12992, 51.534 -0.129) 
MAP YEAR:175018001810182018301860190019502024Show map without markers
ZOOM:14 15 16 17 14 15 16 17 14 15 16 17 14 15 16 17 14 15 16 17 14 15 16 17 14 15 16 17 18 14 15 16 17 14 15 16 17 18
TIP: Adjust the MAP YEAR and ZOOM to tweak historical maps
Graveyard · * · NW1 ·
July
26
2022
Old St Pancras churchyard, served not only as a burial place for the parishioners but also for Roman Catholics from all around London.

St Pancras Old Church claims to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in the world. With the original graveyard design dating back to the church’s Saxon period, it must be regarded as one of the oldest Christian burial places in England.

Many French refugees who had fled the Revolution were buried here. Many foreign dignitaries and aristocrats were buried in the graveyard - they are commemorated on the Burdett-Coutts Memorial Sundial placed here.

The architect John Soane designed a tomb for his wife and himself in the churchyard. This mausoleum may have provided the inspiration for the design by Giles Gilbert Scott of the iconic red telephone boxes.

Mary Wollstonecraft was originally buried here, though her remains now lie in Bournemouth.

Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley planned their 1814 elopement over meetings at the grave of Mary Wollstonecraft - her mother.

Charles Dickens mentioned Old St Pancras churchyard in his 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, making it the location of body snatching to provide corpses for dissection at medical schools.

Gloomy 19th-century novelist Thomas Hardy had, between 1862 and 1867, trained as an architect at King’s College. He was apprenticed to Arthur Blomfield.

And Arthur Blomfield was commissioned to supervise the exhumation of human remains and the dismantling of tombs in the churchyard to make way for the extension of the Midland Railway to its new terminus. Blomfield passed the job on to 25-year-old Hardy.

Hardy spent hours in the churchyard overseeing the removal of bodies and tombs from the land designated for the new railway. He stacked headstones around an ash tree and over the years, the tree grew around them.

The Hardy Tree - as it became known - fell down in December 2022.

The churchyard was reopened in June 1877 as St Pancras Gardens.

On 28 July 1968, The Beatles were photographed in the churchyard grounds on their so-called "Mad Day Out", in a series of pictures designed to promote the single "Hey Jude".



Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence


Click here to explore another London street
We now have 664 completed street histories and 46836 partial histories
Find streets or residential blocks within the M25 by clicking STREETS


CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LOCALITY


Reg Carr   
Added: 10 Feb 2021 12:11 GMT   

Campbellite Meeting
In 1848 the Campbellites (Disciples of Christ) met in Elstree Street, where their congregation was presided over by a pastor named John Black. Their appointed evangelist at the time was called David King, who later became the Editor of the British Millennial Harbinger. The meeting room was visited in July 1848 by Dr John Thomas, who spoke there twice on his two-year ’mission’ to Britain.

Reply
Comment
Wendy    
Added: 22 Mar 2024 15:33 GMT   

Polygon Buildings
Following the demolition of the Polygon, and prior to the construction of Oakshott Court in 1974, 4 tenement type blocks of flats were built on the site at Clarendon Sq/Phoenix Rd called Polygon Buildings. These were primarily for people working for the Midland Railway and subsequently British Rail. My family lived for 5 years in Block C in the 1950s. It seems that very few photos exist of these buildings.

Reply

LATEST LONDON-WIDE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PROJECT


Steve   
Added: 19 Mar 2024 08:42 GMT   

Road construction and houses completed
New Charleville Circus road layout shown on Stanford’s Library Map Of London And Its Suburbs 1879 with access via West Hill only.

Plans showing street numbering were recorded in 1888 so we can concluded the houses in Charleville Circus were built by this date.

Source: Charleville Circus, Sydenham, London

Reply
Comment
Steve   
Added: 19 Mar 2024 08:04 GMT   

Charleville Circus, Sydenham: One Place Study (OPS)
One Place Study’s (OPS) are a recent innovation to research and record historical facts/events/people focused on a single place �’ building, street, town etc.

I have created an open access OPS of Charleville Circus on WikiTree that has over a million members across the globe working on a single family tree for everyone to enjoy, for free, forever.

Source: Charleville Circus, Sydenham, London

Reply
Comment
Charles   
Added: 8 Mar 2024 20:45 GMT   

My House
I want to know who lived in my house in the 1860’s.

Reply

NH   
Added: 7 Mar 2024 11:41 GMT   

Telephone House
Donald Hunter House, formerly Telephone House, was the BT Offices closed in 2000

Reply
Comment
Paul Cox   
Added: 5 Mar 2024 22:18 GMT   

War damage reinstatement plans of No’s 11 & 13 Aldine Street
Whilst clearing my elderly Mothers house of general detritus, I’ve come across original plans (one on acetate) of No’s 11 & 13 Aldine Street. Might they be of interest or should I just dispose of them? There are 4 copies seemingly from the one single acetate example. Seems a shame to just junk them as the level of detail is exquisite. No worries if of no interest, but thought I’d put it out there.

Reply
Comment
Diana   
Added: 28 Feb 2024 13:52 GMT   

New Inn Yard, E1
My great grandparents x 6 lived in New Inn Yard. On this date, their son was baptised in nearby St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch

Source: BDM London, Cripplegate and Shoreditch registers written by church clerk.

Reply
Comment
Vic Stanley   
Added: 24 Feb 2024 17:38 GMT   

Postcose
The postcode is SE15, NOT SE1

Reply
Comment
Gillian   
Added: 17 Feb 2024 00:08 GMT   

No 36 Upper East Smithfield
My great great grandfather was born at No 36 Upper East Smithfield and spent his early years staring out at a "dead wall" of St Katharine’s Docks. His father was an outfitter and sold clothing for sailors. He describes the place as being backed by tenements in terrible condition and most of the people living there were Irish.

Reply



LOCAL PHOTOS
Click here to see map view of nearby Creative Commons images
Click here to see Creative Commons images near to this postcode
The British Library
TUM image id: 1482066417
Licence: CC BY 2.0
The Carreras Cigarette factory, Mornington Crescent area This started life at the Acadia Works on City Road in the 19th century. It was a small business owned by Don Jose Carreras Ferrer who sold cigarettes, cigars and snuff out of small shops. A black cat began to curl up and sleep in the window of the shop near Leicester Square in Prince’s Street and the shop became known locally as "The Black Cat Shop". After the cigarette making machine was invented, the business required a large factory and moved to Hampstead Road between 1926 and 1928. It was designed by architect brothers, Marcus and Owen Collins with George Porri as their consultant. The black cat became the company’s logo. In 1959 the company merged with Rothmans and moved to Basildon, Essex. In the early 1960s the building became offices. The Egyptian décor was stripped away and the two cat statues removed. When the building got new owners in 1996, its former grandeur was restored. The building was later called “Greater London House” having become an office building.
TUM image id: 1660650534
Licence: CC BY 2.0
Agar Town (1857)
Credit: Percy Lovell
TUM image id: 1499434317
Licence: CC BY 2.0
All Saints, Camden Town, in 1828.
TUM image id: 1492970567
Licence: CC BY 2.0
Cromer Street
TUM image id: 1547917827
Licence:
Goods Way - old sign
TUM image id: 1526241892
Licence: CC BY 2.0

In the neighbourhood...

Click an image below for a better view...
Kings Place from York Way
Credit: Alan Stanton
Licence: CC BY 2.0


The British Library
Licence: CC BY 2.0


Agar Town (1857)
Credit: Percy Lovell
Licence: CC BY 2.0


Cobden Statue, corner of Eversholt Street and Camden High Street (1905) Richard Cobden (1804 - 1865) was a Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace. He was associated with the Anti-Corn Law League and the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty. In 1866, the Cobden Club was founded to promote "Peace, Free Trade and Goodwill Among Nations".
Old London postcard
Licence:


Goods Way - old sign
Licence: CC BY 2.0


The Brill Market in Somers Town (1858) Centre stage in this engraving of a busy market scene is the Brill Tavern itself, situated at the end of Brill Row.
Credit: Illustrated News of the World, London
Licence:


York Road was the name for a ’lost’ underground station on the Piccadilly Line north of King’s Cross and south of Caledonian Road. Traffic levels were never high, and the station closed in 1932, on the same day that the northern extension of the Piccadilly Line from Finsbury Park to Arnos Grove opened. London Transport Museum runs tours of the station through its "Hidden London" programme. The tour features original elements of the station including the tiled lift lobby and signal cabin and it explores the modifications that were made to the station over the years. The road it was named after has also changed its name (to York Way)
Credit: The Underground Map
Licence:


The Polygon, Somers Town in 1850 The Polygon was an eighteenth century housing estate - a Georgian building with 15 sides and three storeys that contained 32 houses. The idea appears to have initially appealed to the middle-classes. Two of the most famous residents of the Polygon were William Godwin and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, who died giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Another former Polygoner was Charles Dickens, who lived at No 17 in the 1820s shortly after his father, John Dickens, was released from debtors prison. Dickens later made the Polygon a home for his ’Bleak House’ character Harold Skimpole.
Licence:


An old London bus being drawn by horses on its way to St Pancras Goods Station (1937) Next, its roof will be removed to enable it to fit on a railway trolley and then it will be transported to Chesterfield, Derbyshire for breaking up.
Licence:


Wollstonecraft Street sign
Licence:




  Contact us · Copyright policy · Privacy policy