something of the chameleon: St Pancras New Church

Thursday, 25 June 2026

St Pancras New Church

St Pancras New Church stands at the busy junction of Upper Woburn Place and the Euston Rd. Very chaotic and noisy. The west front now faces a large Neo-Georgian office block* (not bad in itself), but when built, the church overlooked the southern half of Euston Square. (Sadly, that whole s half of the square was built over between the Wars.) To the s, where the Bartlett School of Planning and the Memoir Club (a Hotel) stand, there was originally a small group of stucco villas. Not what one expect to see south of the Euston Rd

I should at this point, I suppose, address the name of the church. The church was built to serve the spiritual needs of the newly urbanised southern part of the vast and ancient parish of St Pancras. St Pancras Old Church, which is some 3/4 mile north north east of the new, is the original parish church, around which a number of traditions have accrued, such as a Roman origin. None of these claims, however, are supported by any evidence. After consecration by the Bishop of London in 1822 it became the parish church and the Old Church reduced to the status of Chapel of Ease. Since then the original parish has been split up. The Old church is the centre of the Parish of Old St Pancras and St Matthew and the New church the Parish of St Pancras and Euston.

The church, and Woburn Lodge, the northernmost of that group of demolished villas, are the work of father and son William and Henry Inwood. The church is in a monumental Greek Revival style with crisp ashlar masonry. The order is Ionic, based on that of the Erechthion on the Athenian Acropolis. The plan follows what was by then a long established Anglican form 'The Basilica after the Ancients', particularly as developed by James Gibbs at St Martin in the Fields, that is a with both a temple front and a west tower. A bit weak that tower. The east end is more complex and stranger still. Where to begin? Perhaps with the central apse. I hardly need to say that Ancient Greek architecture did not use the apse. This one has attached Ionic columns. And then there are vestries, copies of the famous caryatid porch of the Erecththion. Because the porches also contain entrances to the crypt, the sculptor of the caryatids, Charles Rossi, departed from the design of the originals to carry inverted torches and water jugs to symbolise mourning and death, while behind, lurking, silent and remote in the shadows, are sarcophagi. It is all very sculptural, the east end, so that the overall effect is not so far from the English Baroque of Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh. Unsurprisingly the church has been the subject to much criticism and ridicule over the years. For me the main criticism is that it just doesn't rise to the occasion. The detailing is very good, but the location just demands something bolder.

The interior too disappoints, but in a different manner. There is a towering octagonal narthex under the tower, but the nave is just one enormous room, daunting, cold, and lacking the numinous. The ceiling is anti-climactic; again something bolder is required. Where is the 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans'?
No furnishings of note either, certainly nothing to match the scale of the interior, some fine monuments though. The most interesting feature are the columns (cast iron?) that support the gallery. I think Charles Holden added the current columns in the apse, when he designed a new High Altar in 1914, but I may be wrong.