St Pancras New Church

St Pancras New Church stands on the south side of Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is a Greek Revival building, designed by William and Henry William Inwood and completed in 1822. The church occupies a prominent corner site at the junction of Upper Woburn Place and Euston Road, near the historic boundary with Bloomsbury. When built, its west front faced into Euston Square, then a new thoroughfare known as the ‘New Road’. The church was intended to serve the growing population in the southern part of the old parish of St Pancras, which once stretched from Oxford Street to Highgate. The church is one of the most important 19th-century churches in England and holds Grade I listed status. It was the most expensive church built in London since the reconstruction of St Paul’s Cathedral, costing £76,679 and seating 2,500 people. The building reflects the Inwoods’ study of ancient Greek monuments, notably the Erechtheum and the Tower of the Winds in Athens. Its terracotta decorations, caryatids and domed vestibule were modelled on these sources. The pulpit and reading desk were crafted from timber of the Fairlop Oak, a famous tree that fell in 1820. Inside, the church has a flat ceiling spanning 18 metres and galleries supported on cast-iron columns. The apse at the east end is shaped like half a circular temple, with six painted columns. Two tribunes flanked by caryatids stand above the burial vaults, each holding a symbolic extinguished torch or empty jug. The crypt runs the full length of the church and was designed to hold 2,000 coffins, though fewer than five hundred burials took place before the practice ended. Today the crypt serves as an art gallery, and the church continues to host regular Sunday services and civic events for the Borough of Camden.