1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Pancras

ST PANCRAS, a northern metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded E. by Islington, S.E. by Finsbury, S. by Holborn, and W. by St Marylebone and Hampstead, and extending N. to the boundary of the county of London. Pop. (1901) 235,317. In the south it includes a residential district, containing boarding-houses and private hotels. In the centre are Camden Town and Kentish Town, and in the north, where part of Highgate is included, are numerous villas, in the vicinity of Parliament Hill, adjoining Hampstead Heath. A thoroughfare called successively Tottenham Court Road, Hampstead Road, High Street Camden Town, Kentish Town Road, and Highgate Road, runs from south to north; Euston Road crosses it in the south, and Camden Road and Chalk Farm Road branch from it at Camden Town. Besides the greater part of Parliament Hill (267 acres), purchased for the public use in 1886, the borough includes a small part of Regent's Park (mainly in the borough of St Marylebone) and Waterlow Park (29 acres) on the slope of Highgate Hill. It also contains the termini, King's Cross, St Pancras, and Euston, of the Great Northern, Midland, and London and North Western railways, with extensive goods depots of these companies. The parish church of St Pancras in the Fields, near Pancras Road, has lost its ancient character owing Ito reconstruction, though retaining several early monuments. The new church in Euston Road (1822) is a remarkable adaptation of classical models. Among institutions, University College, Gower Street, was founded in 1826, and provides education in all branches common to universities excepting theology. With the department of medicine is connected the University College Hospital (1833) opposite the College. There are several other hospitals; among them the Royal Free Hospital (Gray's Inn Road), the North-west London hospital, Kentish Town, and, in Euston Road, the British (Forbes Winslow memorial) hospital for mental disorders, British hospital for skin diseases, and New hospital for women, administered by female physicians. St Katherine's Hospital, a picturesque building overlooking Regent's Park, with a chapel containing some relics of antiquity, was settled here (1825) on the formation of the St Katherine's Docks near the Tower of London, where it was founded by Queen Matilda in 1148. Its patronage has always been associated with queens, and here was established the Queen Victoria Home for Nurses of the poor, founded out of the women's gift of money to the Queen at her jubilee (1887). Other institutions are the London School of Medicine for women, the Royal Veterinary College and the Aldenham technical institute. The Passmore Edwards Settlement, taking name from its principal benefactor, was founded largely through the instrumentality of Mrs Humphry Ward. Near Regent's Park is Cumberland Market. The parliamentary borough of St Pancras has north, south, east and west divisions, each returning one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 60 councillors. Area, 2694.4 acres.

St Pancras is mentioned in Domesday as belonging to the chapter of St Paul's Cathedral, in which body the lordship of the manors of Cantelows (Kentish Town) and Totenhall (Tottenham Court) was also invested. Camden Town takes name from Baron Camden (d. 1794), lord chancellor under George III. King's Cross was so called from a statue of George IV., erected in 1830, greatly ridiculed and removed in 1845, but an earlier name, Battle Bridge, is traditionally derived from the stand of Queen Boadicea against the Romans, or from one of Alfred's contests with the Danes. Somers Town, between King's Cross and Camden Town, was formerly inhabited by refugees from the French Revolution, many of whom were buried in St Pancras churchyard. In the locality of Somers Town there were formerly to be traced earthworks of unknown age, which William Stukeley argued had belonged to a Roman camp of Julius Caesar. Attached to the former manor-house of Totenhall was one of the famous pleasure resorts of the 17th and 18th centuries, and from c. 1760 to the middle of the 19th century the gardens at Bagnigge Wells (King's Cross Road) were greatly favoured; there were here, moreover, medicinal springs.