credge:"1 and Norden has left a description of the St. Pancras in 1593, which De Foe has confirmed, more than a century after, in his History of Colonel Jack. And although this place be as it were forsaken of all, and true men seldom frequent the same but upon devyne occasions, yet it is visyted and usuall haunted of roages, vagabondes, harlettes, and theeves, who assemble not ther to pray, but to wayte for praye, and manie fall into their hands clothed, that are glad when they are escaped naked. Walk not ther too late.-Norden (in 1593), "MS. Account of Middlesex,” quoted by Ellis, in Norden's Essex, p. xiii. Bishop Burnet, describing the locality in which Sir Edmond Berry Godfrey's body was discovered, tells us it was found "in a ditch, about a mile out of the town, near St. Pancras Church." The exact locality, as we should now describe it, was the field beyond Primrose Hill. When Burnet wrote, near St. Pancras was the best description he could give. In his lines to "Inigo Marquis Would be," Ben Jonson recommends the great architect to Content thee to be Pancredge Earl the while, An earl of show. It were to be hoped St. Peter would let them dwell in the suburbs of heaven; whereas, otherwise, they must keep aloofe at Pancridge, and not come neer the liberties by five leagues and above.-Nash, Pierce Penilesse, 1592. In No churchyard in London possessed so much interest as that of St. Pancras, and none has been subjected to greater outrage. After having been closed for interments it was grievously neglected. July 1863 the Midland Railway Company, who were then planning their London extension, obtained an Act of Parliament authorising them to construct piers for carrying a viaduct across the churchyard. Further powers were granted in July 1864 enabling them to construct a tunnel underneath to join the Metropolitan Railway at King's Cross, and notwithstanding a clause in the Act restraining them from coming within 12 feet of the surface, an enormous trench about 50 feet wide was cut through a crowded portion of the ground and the tunnel built within it. In 1874 the Company sought to obtain powers to acquire the whole of the ground, including the church as well as the St. Giles's cemetery. Public indignation was thoroughly aroused, and the Bill was thrown out. Subsequently the Vestry of St. Pancras acquired the ground for the purpose of a public garden and recreation ground, and it was formally opened by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts on June 28, 1877. The St. Giles's portion was encroached upon in 1887 for the erection of a range of buildings connected with the St. Pancras Workhouse, including a mortuary and rooms for post mortems. To complete the story the Midland Railway Company, in 1889, acquired a large portion of the St. Pancras ground lying in the south-east corner, the boundary of the churchyard in that direction being the iron viaduct already mentioned. For this they paid £12,000, and in addition agreed to purchase a row of houses fronting St. Pancras Road, includ 1 Almond for a Parrot, ing the site of the old Adam and Eve Tavern, to be laid out and added to the recreation ground. Neglect and a London atmosphere have done their work in obliterating the inscriptions, and in a few years none will be legible. Fortunately many have been preserved by Mr. Cansick, in a book which he published when the graveyards were taken over by the Vestry of St. Pancras. But notwithstanding this the period is rapidly approaching when the ancient burial-ground will become a mere "open space," with a few decaying stones here and there to remind the spectator of what it once was. All the registers were transferred to the new church in the Euston Road when it became the parish church. The prebend of Pancras was held by Lancelot Andrews in the time of James I., and by Archdeacon Paley in the reign of George III. Pancras (St.) New Church, EUSTON ROAD and EUSTON SQUARE, was designed by William Inwood, with the assistance of his son, Henry William, the Greek traveller. The foundation stone was laid by the Duke of York, July 1, 1819, and the church consecrated by the Bishop of London, April 7, 1822. The exterior is an adaptation of the Ionic temple of the Erectheion on the Acropolis at Athens, the tower being modelled from the Horologium, or Temple of the Winds, in that city. The projecting building, with the caryatides on each side of the church, and which were intended to form covered entrances to the catacombs, are adaptations of the south portico of the Pandroseion at Athens. The church is built of Portland stone, and the ornaments are chiefly of terra cotta, by C. and H. Rossi. Messrs. Inwood's model for the interior body of the church was the Erectheion. The whole structure was erected at a cost of £76,679:7:8. The pulpit and reading-desk are made of the celebrated Fairlop oak, which stood in Hainault Forest, in Essex, and gave its name to the fair long held under its branches. It was blown down in 1820. Messrs. Inwood took the greatest possible pains to make the several parts of the church accurate reproductions of the originals, as far as the difference of the materials allowed. The present elaborate chromatic decoration of the interior was carried out by Mr. J. G. Crace in 1866. Pancras (St.), SOPER LANE, a church in the ward of Cheap, destroyed in the Great Fire, and not rebuilt. Stow describes it as "a proper small church." The name is preserved in Pancras Lane. The living is united with that of St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside. Abraham Fleming (d. 1607), the earliest translator into English verse of the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil, was rector of this church. Pannier, or Panyer Alley, NEWGATE STREET to PATERNOSTER Row. Panyer Alley, a passage out of Paternoster Row, and is called of such a sign Panyar Alley.-Stow, p. 128. From a passage in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, Pannier Alley would seem to have been in his day inhabited by tripe-sellers; at an earlier period it was the standing-place for bakers with their bread panniers. Observe.—In the middle of the alley, against the east wall, a figure of a pannier or baker's basket (or perhaps a loaf) with a boy with a bunch of grapes sitting upon it, and this inscription :— When you have sought the City round, Yet still this is the highest ground. Panorama, LEICESTER SQUARE. [See Burford's Panorama.] Pantheon, No. 359, on the south side of OXFORD STREET, originally a theatre and public promenade, designed by James Wyatt, R.A., and opened for the first time in January 1772.1 As at Ranelagh, the room devoted to the promenade was a rotunda, but there were fourteen other rooms. The building was Italian in style, and the decoration of the interior was intended to correspond in character. Noorthouck described it as "a superb building . . . dedicated to the nocturnal revels of the British nobility."2 Dr. Johnson visited it in company with Boswell, and both agreed in thinking it inferior to Ranelagh. The masquerades for which the Pantheon soon became celebrated, were on a more splendid scale than those at Chelsea. What do you think of a winter Ranelagh, erecting in Oxford Road, at the expense of sixty thousand pounds?-Walpole to Mann, May 6, 1770. The new winter Ranelagh in Oxford Road is almost finished. It amazed me myself. Imagine Balbec in all its glory! The pillars are of artificial giallo antico. The ceilings, even of the passages, are of the most beautiful stuccos in the best taste of grotesque. The ceilings of the ball-rooms and the panels painted like Raphael's loggias in the Vatican. A dome like the Pantheon glazed. It is to cost fifty thousand pounds.-Walpole to Mann, April 26, 1771. February 7, 1774.-Wednesday your two sisters, Molly Cambridge, and I went to the Pantheon. It is undoubtedly the finest and most complete thing ever seen in England; such mixture of company never assembled before under the same roof. Lord Mansfield, Mrs. Baddeley, Lord Chief Baron Parker, Mrs. Abington, Sir James Porter, Mademoiselle Himell, Lords Hyde and Camden, with many other serious men, and most of the gay ladies in town, and ladies of the best rank and character; and, by appearance, some very low people. Louisa is thought very like Mrs. Baddeley [a notorious gay lady]; Gertrude and I had our doubts whether our characters might not suffer by walking with her; but had they offered to turn her out we depended on Mrs. Hanger's protection. None of any fashion dance country dances or minuets in the great room, though there were a number of minuets and a large set of dancers. I saw Miss Wilkes dance a minuet, and that was the only name I knew; some young ladies danced cotillons in the Cotillon Gallery. I met a great many of my acquaintances, and every one complained of being tired after they had been there an hour.-Mrs. Harris to her son, the Earl of Malmesbury (Letters, vol. i. p. 247). Mrs. Hardcastle. I'm in love with the town but who can have a manner, that has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens, the Borough, and such places, where the nobility chiefly resort.-Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, 1773, Act ii. When Gibbon was writing the first portion of his Decline and Fall he was a frequent visitor to the Pantheon. His plan of early rising gave him command of time, and he tells us that he never found his 1 There is a large and good interior view (with figures) of the Pantheon, engraved by Earlom in 1772. 2 Hist. of London, 4to, 1773, P. 732. PANTON STREET AND PANTON SQUARE 25 mind more vigorous, nor his composition more happy than in the winter hurry of society and parliament. In February 1774 he writes to Holroyd, "Don't you remember that in our Pantheon walks we admired the modest beauty of Mrs. Horneck? Eh bien, alas! She is," etc. This was the wife of Goldsmith's " Captain-in-lace," one of the most abandoned women of her time, who eloped with her husband's brother officer, Captain Scawen. In the following April Gibbon speaks of himself as "a very fine gentleman, a subscriber to the masquerade, . . . and now writing at Boodle's in a fine velvet coat, with ruffles of my lady's choosing." Of this entertainment he says in another letter :— May 4, 1774.-Last night was the triumph of Boodle's. Our masquerade cost two thousand guineas; a sum that might have fertilized a province (I speak in your own style), vanished in a few hours, but not without leaving behind it the fame of the most splendid and elegant fête that was perhaps ever given in a seat of the arts and opulence. It would be as difficult to describe the magnificence of the scene, as it would be easy to record the humour of the night. The one was above, the other below all relation. I left the Pantheon about five this morning.-Gibbon to Holroyd. Masquerades lost their attraction-Fashion turned her back on the Pantheon. When the Opera House was burnt down, 1789, the Pantheon was secured as a temporary home, and opened early in 1791. February 18, 1791.-The Pantheon has opened, and is small, they say, but pretty and simple; all the rest ill-conducted and, from the singers to the scene-shifters, imperfect the dances long and bad, and the whole performance so dilatory and tedious that it lasted from eight to half-past twelve.-H. Walpole to Agnes Berry. : As an opera house its existence was brief. It was entirely destroyed by fire, January 14, 1792. It is a remarkable fact that Mr. Wyatt, who was travelling to town from the west in a post chaise with the ingenious Dixon, his clerk, saw the glare of this memorable fire illuminating the sky while crossing Salisbury Plain.-Angelo, p. 96. A second but less brilliant Pantheon soon rose from the ashes of the first. The management was not successful. Theatrical performances, concerts, lectures, and miscellaneous exhibitions were successively essayed. The building was taken down in 1812, and a third Pantheon opened the following year. It was no more successful than its predecessor, and after being closed for some years it was reconstructed in 1834, and fitted, with then unusual splendour, as a bazaar and picture gallery. Mr. Sidney Smirke, R.A., was the architect, the cost over £30,000. The Oxford Street front is a part of Wyatt's original building, but the portico was remodelled by Mr. Smirke. After the fluctuations usual to such places it was finally closed on March 2, 1867, and is now the wine warehouse of Messrs. Gilbey. At the Pantheon Miss Stephens, afterwards Countess of Essex, made her first appearance on the stage in the character of Barbarina. Panton Street, HAYMARKET, and Panton Square, PICCADILLY, were so called after Colonel Thomas Panton, a celebrated gamester, who in one night, it is said, won as many thousands as purchased him an estate of above £1500 a year. "After this good fortune," says 26 PANTON STREET AND PANTON SQUARE Lucas, "he had such an aversion against all manner of games that he would never handle cards or dice again; but lived very handsomely on his winnings to his dying day, which was in the year 1681."1 Colonel Panton was the last proprietor of the gaming-house called Piccadilly Hall [see Piccadilly], and was in possession of land on the site of the streets and buildings which bear his name as early as the year 1664. A few years later he was busy building. Sir Christopher Wren, Surveighor Generall," had been directed to report on Colonel Panton's operations in 1671. May it please your Majesty, in obedience to your Majesty's order of May 24, 1671, upon the petition of Thomas Panton, Esq., setting forth that he having purchased with design to build, at Piccadilly, and the two bowling greens fronting the Haymarket, and on the north of the Tennis Court, upon which several old houses were standing, which the said Thomas Panton demolished to improve the same, and make the plan more uniform: in reference to which he let out the ground, laid several foundations, and built part thereof, before his Majesty's late Proclamation; and praying his Majesty's permission, under the broad seal, to proceed in the said buildings. Upon which your Majesty ordered the Surveighor Generall to examine the truth of the allegations, and report whether the buildings will cure the noysomeness of the place; accordingly I have viewed the said place, and find the petitioner's allegations, as far as I can judge, to be true, and that the design of building shown to me may be very useful to the public, especially by opening a new street from the Haymarket into Leicester Fields, which will ease, in some measure, the great passage of the Strand, and will cure the noisomeness of that part: and I presume may not be unfit for your Majesty's licence, provided the said Thomas Panton build regularly, according to direction and according to a design to which his said licence may refer ; and that he be obliged to build with brick, with party walls, with sufficient scantlings, good paving in the streets, and sufficient sewers and conveighances for the water; and that the buildings expressed in his patent be registered before the foundations are laid. All which is most humbly submitted to your Majesty's wisdom and farther order hereupon. Christopher Wren. A few months after this Colonel Panton made his formal application to erect a "fair street of good buildings" between the Haymarket and Hedge Lane, marked in the manuscript to be called Panton Street, and other "fair buildings fronting the Haymarket upon the said ground." "Colonel Panton's Tenements" are rated for the first time in St. Martin's poor-books under the year 1672; "Panton Street North" for the first time in 1674; and "Panton Street by the Laystall" for the first time in 1675. "Madame Panton," the widow, lived in a capital mansion on the east side of the Haymarket as late as 1725. Henry, fifth Lord Arundel of Wardour (d. 1726), from whom Wardour Street derives its name, was married to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Panton, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Esquire. In Panton Street, on the south side, was Hickford's Auction Rooms, the Christie and Manson's Rooms of the reign of George I. The great room was used also as a ballroom. On February 2, 1720-1721, the Westminster scholars performed Otway's Orphan at "Hickford's Dancing-Room, in Panton Street, near Leicester Fields." Prior, an old Westminster, wrote the prologue, and makes allusion to the use to which the room was ordinarily put, 1 Lucas's Lives of the Gamesters, 12mo, 1714, p. 68. |