St Pancras Old Church

St Pancras Old Church
St Pancras Old Church
Denomination	Church of England
Tradition	Anglo-Catholic
Website	posp.co.uk/old-st-pancras
Administration
Parish	Old St Pancras
Deanery	South Camden
Archdeaconry	Hampstead
Episcopal area	Edmonton
Diocese	London
Province	Canterbury
Clergy
Vicar(s)	James Elston

St Pancras Old Church is a Church of England parish church in Somers Town, central London. It is dedicated to the Roman martyr Saint Pancras, and is believed by many to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in England. The church is situated on Pancras Road in the London Borough of Camden, with the surrounding area and its international railway station taking its name. St Pancras Old Church, which was largely rebuilt in the Victorian era, should not be confused with St Pancras New Church about a kilometre away, on the Euston Road.

Originally, the parish of St Pancras stretched from close to Oxford Street almost to Highgate. In the early Middle Ages there was a centre of population in the vicinity of what is now known as the old church. However, in the 14th century the population abandoned the site and moved to what is now Kentish Town. The reasons for this were probably the vulnerability of the plain around the church to flooding (the River Fleet, which is now underground, runs through it) and the availability of better wells at Kentish Town, where there is less clay in the soil. The church subsequently fell into disrepair. Towards the end of the 18th century, services were only held in the church on one Sunday each month; on other weeks, the same congregation would use a chapel in Kentish Town. It lost its status as the parish church when the New Church on what was to become the Euston Road was consecrated in 1822, and became a chapel of ease.