Churchyard History

We believe this has been a site of Christian worship since the 4th Century. Pancras was martyred in Rome 304, he was only 14 when he was beheaded by Diocletian. At the conversion to Christianity soon after, the story goes that St Pancras became a popular figure in the early Roman Church and with sectors of Roman society. He is often depicted in the uniform of a Roman soldier. The St Pancras Old Church you see today is largely the result of comprehensive restorations of the ancient building, in 1847, 1888 and 1925. Railing plaques outside, shows the Church beside the now hidden river Fleet in a rural setting, as it would have looked two centuries ago.

Here is a monument to the railway encroachments of the nineteenth century and one that is continuing to evolve. The writer Thomas Hardy was employed as an overseer for Arthur Blomfield the architect managing the disinterment of human remains. In his later writings a poem ends thus

There’s not a modest maiden elf
Yet dreads the final trumpet
Lest half of her should rise herself
And half some sturdy strumpet

This monument records his death in 1837. It is one of only two Grade I listed monuments in London. Soane was the architect of the Bank of England and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The death of his wife, and a son predeceasing him, meant he spent decades refining the design. A further son from whom he was bitterly estranged is absent. The monument looks for all the world like a telephone box, yet the telephone box was a century of being invented. In the 1920s the design competition was won by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, grandson of George Gilbert Scott who built the St Pancras Hotel. As a trustee of the Sir John Soane Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields Soane’s design from a century earlier must have rung a bell. Very recently when a piece of stone from Soane’s monument went missing, telecommunications facilitated its rightful recovery. It was discovered and tracked down on eBay.

Born 27th April 1759 she was the author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’, published 1792. She died 10th September 1797 just ten days after giving birth to a daughter (Mary Shelley 30th August 1797-1st February 1851), who went on to write ‘Frankenstein’. The stone memorial to William and Mary (Wollstonecraft) Godwin was previously further to the East. Their remains are no longer buried here. With the disruption of the railway the family removed them to Bournemouth.

The name Coutts is familiar as the Queen’s bankers and she lived in Highgate to the North of the former Parish of St Pancras. A model estate designed for her workers ‘Holly Village’ survives next to Highgate Cemetery. A close friend and campaigner for a time with Dickens she was responsible for the ornate gothic sundial unveiled in 1879. It records on each side many notable figures and their professions including French emigres from the time of the Revolution. Burdett Coutts herself is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Tucked away along the northern side of the Burdett Coutts memorial is a plaque to ‘The English Bach’. Johann Christian Bach was music master to Queen Charlotte, wife of George Ill. Born in Leipzig 1735 he was the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach. He died on Tuesday 1st January 1782. With Carl Friedrich Abel (1723 – 1787), also buried in the churchyard, foreign musicians were introduced into London in Bach-Abel Concerts. The Beatles exploded on the popular music scene in the early 1960s. As the decade wore on getting them together in one place became increasingly difficult and the publicity photographs of the group were outdated. On Sunday 28th July 1968 a hop step and a jump from Bach’s two century old resting place, John, Paul, George and Ringo paused on a whirlwind photo shoot. To this day visitors arrive following the path of the Beatles ‘Mad day out in London’.