It is a very small
structure, consisting only of a nave and chancel; at the west end is a
low tower, with a kind of dome."[5] Mr. Lysons speaks of the
disproportionate size of the church to the population of the parish; but
since his time another church has been erected, the splendour and size
of which in every respect accord with the increased wealth and numbers
of the parish.
[5] The visitation of the church in the year 1251, mentions a
very small tower, a good slope font, and a small marble stone
ornamented with copper to carry the _Pax_.
The church and churchyard of Pancras have long been noted as the
burial-place of such Roman Catholics as die in London and its
vicinity.[6] Many of the tombs exhibit a cross, and the initials R.I.P.
(_Requiescat in pace_), which initials, or others analogous to them, are
always used by the Catholics on their sepulchral monuments. Mr. Lysons
heard it assigned by some of that persuasion, as a reason for this
preference to Pancras as a burial-place, that masses were formerly said
in a church in the south of France, dedicated to the same saint, for the
souls of the deceased interred at St. Pancras in England. After the
French revolution, a great number of ecclesiastics and other refugees,
some of them of high rank, were buried in this churchyard; and in 1811,
Mr.
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