Open House London 2021. Part 1, an old new church.

 

Saturday 5th September 

I live too far from London to really take advantage of the annual Open House Festival. Travel time cuts into the hours available to visit, especially on this Saturday with much of the south western Underground that I would normally use out of action for planned works. So mainline into Paddington it was and tube to Euston Square, a short walk along the Euston Road from which lies my first venue.

 

 

 

St. Pancras New Church was open for guided tours with the crypt also open for self-guided creeping about. The Open House London guide (web only this year) description says "Unique Greek-style parish church. Grade I listed building inspired by the ionic temple of the Erechtheum on the Acropolis. A notable feature are the Caryatids guarding the entrances to the crypt. On entering the building and having completed covid formalities there was a brief wait before our informal tour could begin while some church related activity completed at the far end of the nave. This is still a working church and the vicar, Revd. Anne Stevens was present in her “office”.

 

 

 

And an impressive place it is too.  St Pancras Church is in a Greek Revival style, built in 1819–22 to the designs of William and Henry William Inwood. Despite being a couple of centuries old it's often referred to as St Pancras New Church, in order to distinguish it from St Pancras Old Church, which stands some 940 yards away to the north.

I’m no architectural expert so what follows has been cribbed from the interwebs. The church is in a Greek revival style, using the Ionic order. It is built from brick, faced with Portland stone, except for the portico and the tower above the roof, which are entirely of stone. All the external decoration, including the capitals of the columns is of terracotta.

Henry William Inwood had travelled much in Greece and indeed was in Athens at the time that the plans for St Pancras were accepted. The Inwoods drew on two ancient Greek monuments, the Erechtheum and the Tower of the Winds, both in Athens, for their inspiration. Henry William brought back plaster casts of details of the Erechtheum, along with some excavated fragments, to assist with the design.

 

As for St. Pancras himself, there aren’t many churches in the UK dedicated to the 14 year old boy soldier, as depicted by his statue inside the church, supposedly beheaded for his faith in 304. Let’s face it, if someone says “St. Pancras” the first thing that comes to mind is trains rather than 4th century martyrs.

 

 

 

Having been shown around the inside and outside of the above ground parts I walked down the south side to the entrance to the crypt, beneath four of the “famous” caryatids. There are another four on the north side and they are “famous” for the story that persists that they were constructed off site, of terracotta around a cast iron core, but when brought to site to be fitted were found to be a few inches too tall. The apparent solution was to slice the extra inches out from the middle to make them the correct height. Is it true? I don’t know but it would explain the rather awkward appearance they have around their midriffs.

 

 

 

A few hundred former parishioners are buried in the crypt but you don’t get to “meet” any of them and the only memorials I saw were these piled up in one of the vaulted sections. There was an exhibition of photographs of the church spread around the walls of the crypt and a short video about the history of the church projected, in fine parish church “make do” style, onto a sheet in the chamber below the north entrance. The foundation stone of the church is inscribed in Greek, translated as "May the light of the blessed Gospel thus ever illuminate the dark temples of the Heathen”. In the video the vicar suggests that it might have been intended to counter the fact that the building is in what would at the time have been regarded as a pagan style, which raised a few chuckles.

 

 

 

After St. Pancras Church my intended next Open House visit was to have been St. Bart’s Hospital but the queue for that stretched all the way around the courtyard and if I’d stood in the scorching heat for that long I’d have needed admitting to the place rather than just getting a look around. So instead I had a wander off around the Barbican, which is always worth a visit, and Smithfield for a refreshing pint.

 

St. Pancras New Church Photos here.