Church Of St Pancras

CAMDEN

TQ2982NE UPPER WOBURN PLACE 798-1/89/1657 (East side) 10/06/54 Church of St Pancras

GV I

Church. 1819-22. By H and HW Inwood, restored 1951-3. Portland stone with stone coloured terracotta detailing. Single storey, rectangular plan; nave of 6 bays plus vestibule with tower over and portico at west end; east end with apsidal sanctuary and rectangular tribunes to north and south. Greek Revival style, general plan and form influenced by St Martin-in-the-Fields, but rich detailing influenced by, and in some cases copied from, casts of the Erechtheum, Athens. EXTERIOR: west end, hexastyle Ionic portico approached by 2 steps. 3 trapezoid architraved doorways with heavy, panelled wooden doors. All heavily enriched. 4-stage tower over vestibule, a free adaptation of the Tower of the Winds, with octagonal ashlar drum, columns supporting an octagonal entablature, repeated above in diminished scale and surmounted by an octagonal drum with cornice and pointed finial with a cross. North and south facades with trapezoid, architraved, recessed windows, smaller similar windows below, Ionic half columns marking the vestibule and palmette brattishing above the cornice. Projecting near the east end, rectangular tribunes facing north and south; each with Ionic portico supported by 4 caryatids copied from the Erechtheum by John Rossi (formerly a modeller at Coade's Manufactury) built up in terracotta pieces around cast-iron columns; behind the caryatids, a sarcophagus. 2 leaf doors with roundels in the high podium. Apsidal east end with tetrastyle in antis Ionic half columns supporting an entablature and trapezoid, architraved, recessed windows. One similar window each side of the apse, to the nave, and one similar but smaller window to each east facade of the tribunes. INTERIOR: entrance via the west end through an octagonal vestibule corresponding with the tower above and ceiled over a ring of dwarf Doric columns standing in a frieze. Nave has flat, coffered ceiling with galleries supported on lotus columns around 3 sides. Apse with 6 verd-antique scagliola Ionic columns on marble podium in the curve of the apse. Some early memorial tablets in Grecian style. Clerk's vestry in the north tribune with Ionic columns supporting an oval ceiling. Fine mahogany pulpit carried on 4 Ionic columns. High altar, 1914 by Adams & Holden. Stained glass by Clayton and Bell. HISTORICAL NOTE: the earliest Greek Revival church in London, built as part of the southern expansion of St Pancras and superseding the parish church, St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road (qv). (Survey of London: Vol. XXIV, King's Cross Neighbourhood, St Pancras IV: London: -1952: 1-9).

Listing NGR: TQ2981882578