St Pancras Old Church, Camden, Church building in Camden, England
St Pancras Old Church is a stone building with a square tower in Camden, within the London Borough of Camden. Georgian windows and Gothic elements were added during Victorian reconstruction, while the nave and chancel preserve the earlier layout.
References in the Domesday Book and archaeological finds confirm religious use since Anglo-Saxon times, possibly from the seventh century. The building underwent Norman and medieval rebuilding phases, then major restoration during the nineteenth century.
The churchyard holds the graves of eighteenth-century figures including composers Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Visitors discover the Hardy Tree among the burial ground, around which gravestones were arranged during nineteenth-century railway construction work.
The building welcomes visitors daily between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon for prayer and exploration. The churchyard can be walked freely, though paths among the graves may become slippery in wet weather.
This building is considered the last place in England where Catholic Mass was celebrated before the Protestant Reformation. The crypt beneath the chancel contains remnants of Roman brick, possibly from an earlier place of worship.
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