Place:St. Pancras, London, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

St. Pancras was one of the ancient parishes of the County of Middlesex, England. In 1889 it was transferred to the newly-created County of London and in 1900 was renamed as St. Pancras Metropolitan Borough (#24 on the map). St. Pancras Metropolitan Borough was abolished in 1965, becoming part of the London Borough of Camden.

History

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia St. Pancras was originally a medieval parish, which ran from close to what is now Oxford Street north as far as Highgate, and from the present Regent's Park in the west to the road now known as York Way in the east, boundaries which take in much of the current London Borough of Camden, including the central part of it. However, as the choice of name for the borough suggests, St. Pancras has lost its status as the central settlement in the area. The district now encompassed by the term St. Pancras is not easy to define, and usage of St. Pancras as a place name is fairly limited. The original focus of St. Pancras was St. Pancras Old Church, which is in the southern half of the parish, and is believed by many to be one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in Great Britain. However, in the 14th century the population abandoned the site and moved to Kentish Town, probably due to flooding by the River Fleet, which is now underground, and the availability of better wells at Kentish Town. The old settlement was abandoned and the church had become derelict by 1847. In the 1790s Earl Camden began to develop some fields to the north and west of the Old Church and naming the area Camden Town. In the mid 19th century two major railway stations were built practically adjacent to each other to the south of the Old Church, one of them called St Pancras and the other King's Cross. A residential district, known as Somers Town, was built to the south and east of St. Pancras church. The term St. Pancras is sometimes applied to the immediate vicinity of St. Pancras Station, but King's Cross is the usual name for the area around the two mainline stations as a whole. In 1822 the new church of St. Pancras on Euston Road was dedicated as the parish church, and by the end of the century the ancient parish had been divided into 37 ecclesiastical parishes, including one for the rebuilt Old St Pancras Church. There are currently 17 Church of England parishes completely contained within the boundaries of the ancient parish.

St. Pancras Neighbourhoods

• St. Pancras
• North St. Pancras (redirected here)
• Agar Town (very small, near Kentish Town, redirected here)
• Camden Town
• Haverstock Hill (redirected here)
• Highgate
• Kentish Town (and New Kentish Town)
• Primrose Hill (redirected here)
• Somers Town (and Kings Cross)
• Fitzrovia (also known as Fitzroy Square)

Cemeteries

During the 18th and 19th centuries, St Pancras was famous for its cemeteries: as well as the graveyard of Old St. Pancras Church, it also contained the cemeteries of St. James's Church, Piccadilly, St Giles in the Fields, St. Andrew, Holborn, St. George's Church, Bloomsbury, and St. George the Martyr, Holborn. These were all closed under the Extramural Interment Act in 1854; the parish was required to purchase land some distance away, and chose East Finchley for its new St. Pancras Cemetery.

The disused graveyard at St. Pancras Old Church was left alone for over thirty years, until the building of the Midland Railway required the removal of many of the graves. Thomas Hardy, then a junior architect and later a novelist and poet, was involved in this work. Particularly, he placed a number of gravestones around a tree, now known as "the Hardy Tree".

Churches of St. Pancras

GENUKI has a list and a map showing locations

This list from the FamilySearch Wiki

• All Saints, Camdentown Chapel (registers started in 1824)
• Percy Chapel (registers started in 1776, ended in 1808)
• St. John the Baptist, Kentish Town Chapel (registers started in 1815, short-lived)
• St. Mary the Virgin, Somerstown Chapel (registers started in 1826, short-lived)
• St. Pancras (registers started in 1660)
• St. Peter, Regent Square Chapel (registers started in 1829)

This list from A Vision of Britain through Time (Includes mergers. Dates are undefined.)

• Agar Town (1862-1954)
• Brookfield, Dartmouth Park (1877- )
• Fitzroy Square (or Fitzrovia), St. John (1852-1904)
• Fitzroy Square, St. Saviour (1865-1904)
• Fitzroy Square, St. John with St. Saviour (1904-1952)
• Highgate (1834- )
• Highgate All Saints (1874- )
• Highgate Rise (1853- )
• Highgate St. Augustine (1898- )
• Kentish Town St. Barnabas (1880-1957)
• Kentish Town St. Benet and All Saints (1881- )
• Kentish Town St. John the Baptist (1863- )
• Kentish Town St. Martin (1864-1953)
• Kentish Town St. Martin with St. Andrew (1953- )
• Kentish Town St. Silas (1912- )
• New Kentish Town (1935- )
• Kings Cross (1849-1868)
• Somers Town (1852- )
• Somers Town Christ Church (1868-1954)
• Grays Inn Road (1839-1931)
• Grays Inn Road St. Jude (1862-1935)
• Regent Square St. Peter (1852-1954)
• St. Pancras ( -1954)
• St. Pancras Christ Church (1837- )
• St. Pancras Holy Cross (1876-1935)
• St. Pancras Holy Cross with St. Jude (1935-1954)
• St. Pancras Holy Cross with St. Jude and St. Peter (1954- )
• St. Pancras Old St. Pancras (1852-1956)
• St. Pancras St. Bartholomew (1860-1959)
• St. Pancras St. Mark (1853- )
• St. Pancras St. Saviour (1865- )
• St. Pancras with St. James and Christ Church (1854- )
• North St. Pancras (1894- )

Research tips

Middlesex Research Tips

Parts of Middlesex were absorbed into London in 1889 (Inner London), and some in 1965 (Outer London). Depending on the specific location and the year being investigated it may be necessary to check London records as well as those of Middlesex.

• See wiki.familysearch.org under "Middlesex" for key information about the jurisdictions and records of Middlesex, plus links to indexes, reference aids and Family History Library holdings. As at October 2019 FamilySearch has updated its listings of Parish Registers, 1538-1912 for Westminster.
• The London Metropolitan Archives (40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB) holds records relating to the whole of Greater London. Ancestry (subscription necessary) has produced transcriptions and provides images of lists of baptisms, marriages, and burials in churches across Greater London. These lists start in 1813 and stretch into the 20th century.
• The Victoria History of the County of Middlesex is a series of volumes available online through British History Online. The volumes were written over the past hundred or so years by a number of authors and cover various sections of Middlesex. A list of the volumes and what each contains can be found under the source Victoria History of the County of Middlesex
• GENUKI has a long list of websites and archive holders in addition to London Metropolitan Archives above. (The list from GENUKI is not maintained so well that there is never a dead link in it. However, it is often worth googling the title given on the page just in case the contributor has reorganized their website.)
• GENUKI has a separate page for Middlesex references.
• GENUKI also has a list of the Archives and Local Studies Libraries for each of the boroughs of Greater London.
• Registration Districts in Middlesex and Registration Districts in London, are lists of the registration districts used for civil registration (births, marriages and deaths, as well as the censuses). There are linked supporting lists of the parishes which made up each registration district, the dates of formation and abolition of the districts, the General Register Office numbers, and the local archive-holding place. This work has been carried out by Brett Langston under the agency of GENUKI (Genealogy United Kingdom and Ireland) and UKBMD - Births, Marriages, Deaths & Censuses on the Internet.
• An Outline map of the boundary of the London Borough of Camden exported from OpenStreetMap “© OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA” is worth examining to see the locations of the neighbourhoods within old St. Pancras parish. This is a modern map showing the whole of Camden Borough.

Greater London Research Tips

Researching ancestors in London will probably be more successful than researching ancestors in the rest of England, particularly for the period before 1837 and the advent of civil registration. Baptisms, marriages and burials are available online for County of London parishes, and possibly for parishes throughout Greater London as well.

• Anglican Parishes in London is a wiki here on WeRelate listing the places of worship of the established church throughout London. The churches are grouped within the post-1965 boroughs and for each is the street address, a link to the Booth Map (inner boroughs only), the time span for which the database AIM25 holds records, the FamilySearch Wiki link (see below), the Wikipedia link, and further notes. This is a work-in-progress and not all churches are listed as yet, but it is a guide to a great deal more information on those for which information has been gathered.
• The London Metropolitan Archives (40 Northampton Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0HB) holds records relating to the whole of Greater London. Ancestry (subscription necessary) has produced transcriptions and provides images of lists of baptisms, marriages, and burials in churches across Greater London. Many of these lists start in 1813 and stretch into the 20th century; some start even earlier.

Maps

• A street-by-street map of London (both sides of the Thames, and stretching from Limehouse, Stepney and Greenwich in the east to Hyde Park and Kensington in the west) drawn by Edward Mogg in 1806. Blows up to a very readable level. Highly recommended viewing. Shows named areas on the edge of the County of London (1900-1965) as the small villages they were in 1800. Streets in the City are named, but churches are missing.
• The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers edited by Cecil Humphery-Smith and published by Phillimore & Co Ltd (edition of 1995) provides a map of the City of London indicating all the parishes and includes dates of commencement of registers for parishes formed before 1832.
• Wikipedia has an expandable map of the area of devastation of the 1666 fire. The map includes the location of Pudding Lane where the fire started.
• A map of London in the 1890s provided by the National Library of Scotland. There are a few steps between the home page index and the individual maps which may be difficult to follow for those who don't know London, but the maps themselves are produced at the scale of 5 feet to the mile on the original and are very clear. Houses on streets are marked, but not numbered.
• Ordnance Survey map of London 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing London parishes just after the reorganization of 1899. The map was originally drawn over a street map at a scale of 1 inch to the mile and can be blown up to inspect a single borough. Only the major streets are marked and are only visible at maximum magnification. The City of London is an inset in the top right hand corner.
• Ordnance Survey map of Middlesex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing the parishes remaining in Middlesex after the reorganization of 1899 when much of the former area of Middlesex had been transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Surrey 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Surrey parishes (chiefly Southwark) just after the reorganization of 1899 when the most urban parts of Surrey were transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Kent 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Kent parishes just after the reorganization of 1899 when the western part of Kent had been transferred into London.
• Ordnance Survey map of Essex 1900 (provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time) showing Essex parishes (West Ham, East Ham, Ilford) which were absorbed into Greater London in 1965.

Registration Districts

• Registration Districts in London, Registration Districts in Middlesex, Registration Districts in Surrey, Registration Districts in Kent, and Registration Districts in Essex are lists of the registration districts used for civil registration (births, marriages and deaths, as well as the censuses). There are linked supporting lists of the parishes which made up each registration district, the dates of formation and abolition of the districts, the General Register Office numbers, and the local archive-holding place. This work has been carried out by Brett Langston under the agency of GENUKI (Genealogy United Kingdom and Ireland) and UKBMD - Births, Marriages, Deaths & Censuses on the Internet, and has been updated into the 21st century. If the only information about an individual has been obtained from UKBMD, the name of the registration district is considered a "placename" within WeRelate and can be used to provide a broad estimate of the location.

Cemeteries

• Deceased Online includes four of the "Magnificent Seven" cemeteries (Brompton, Highgate, Kensal Green, and Nunhead) in its inventory of 65 London cemeteries. Transcripts for Abney Park are free with registration online at www.devsys.co.uk/ap/. Ancestry (international subscription necessary) has "London, England, City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Registers, 1841-1966". That leaves West Norwood without comprehensive online access to burial records. (Deceased Online and Ancestry may have increased their provision since this was written in 2016.)
• As of October 2019 Ancestry has a file titled "England & Scotland, Select Cemetery Registers 1800-2016" which includes Abney Park Cemetery, Greenford Park Cemetery, Acton Cemetery, Ealing & Old Brentford Cemetery, Havelock Norwood Cemetery, Hortus Cemetery, South Ealing Cemetery, Queens Road Cemetery, and Chingford Mount Cemetery.
• The City of London Cemetery, at Manor Park, near Wanstead in the London Borough of Redbridge also contains remains transferred from former parishes in the City of London whose graveyards have been replaced by streets and commercial buildings.
• Brookwood Cemetery, beyond the Greater London borders in Surrey, was opened in 1854 for burials for Londoners. See the Wikpedia article.

Other online sources

• See the FamilySearch Wiki under "London" and also under "Middlesex", "Surrey", "Essex" and "Kent" for key information about Greater London's jurisdictions and records, plus links to indexes, reference aids and Family History Library holdings.
• GENUKI has a long list of websites and archive holders in addition to London Metropolitan Archives above. (The list from GENUKI is not maintained so well that there is never a dead link in it. However, it is often worth googling the title given on the page just in case the contributor has reorganized their website and GENUKI has not picked it up.)
• GENUKI also has a list of the Archives and Local Studies Libraries for each of the boroughs of Greater London.
• The London Encyclopaedia by Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert. An e-book available online through Google, originally published by Pan Macmillan. There is a search box in the left-hand pane.
• London Lives. A very useful free website for anyone researching their London ancestors between the years 1690-1800. This is a fully searchable edition of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.
• London Ancestor, a website belonging to one of the London family history societies, has a list of transcriptions of directories from the 18th century, listing in one case "all the squares, streets, lanes, courts, yards, alleys, &C. in and about Five Miles of the Metropolis..." In other parts of the same website are maps of various parts of 19th century London and Middlesex.
• The proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court, 1674-1913. A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. This website is free to use.