Background The station's name comes from the
St. Pancras parish, whose name originates from the fourth-century Christian boy martyr
Pancras of Rome. The station was commissioned by the
Midland Railway (MR), who had a network of routes in the Midlands and in south and west Yorkshire and Lancashire, but no route of its own to London. Before 1857 the MR used the lines of the L&NWR for trains into the capital; subsequently, the company's
Leicester and Hitchin Railway gave access to London via the
Great Northern Railway (GNR). In 1862, traffic for the
second International Exhibition suffered extensive delays over the stretch of line into London over the GNR's track; the route into the city via the L&NWR was also at capacity, with coal trains causing the network at and elsewhere to reach effective gridlock. This was the stimulus for the MR to build its own line to London from Bedford, which would be just under long.
Samuel Carter was solicitor for the parliamentary bill, which was sanctioned in 1863. The main economic justification for the MR extension was for the transport of coal and other goods to the capital, which was hindered by a
1s 9d toll on GNR lines. A large goods station was constructed between 1862 and 1865, sited to the west of the King's Cross coal depot between the
North London Railway and the
Regent's Canal. Although coal and goods were the main motivation for the London extension, the Midland realised the prestige of having a central London passenger terminus and decided it must have a front on Euston Road. The company purchased the eastern section of land on the road's north side owned by
Earl Somers.
Construction The passenger station was designed by
William Henry Barlow and constructed on a site that had previously been a slum called
Agar Town. The approach line to the station crossed over the Regent's Canal at a reasonable gradient, meaning the platforms were above the ground level. (By contrast, the lines to the adjacent King's Cross station tunnel under the Regent's Canal.) Initial plans were for a two or three span roof with the void between station and ground level filled with spoil from tunnelling to join the Midland Main Line to the St. Pancras branch. Instead, due to the value of the land in such a location the lower area was used for freight, in particular
beer from Burton. As a result, the undercroft was built with columns and girders, maximising space, set out to the same plans as those used for beer warehouses, and with a basic unit of length that of a beer barrel. The contract to build the station substructure and connecting lines was given to
Messrs. Waring, with Barlow's assistant Campion as supervisor. The lower floor for beer warehousing contained interior columns wide and deep, carrying girders supporting the main station and track. The connection to the Widened Lines (St. Pancras branch) ran below the station's bottom level, in an east-to-west direction. To avoid the foundations of the roof interfering with the space beneath, and to simplify the design, and minimise cost, it was decided to construct a single span roof, with cross ties for the arch at the station level. The arch was sprung directly from the station level, with no piers. Additional advice on the design of the roof was given to Barlow by
Rowland Mason Ordish. The arches' ribs had a web depth of , mostly open ironwork. The span width, from wall to wall was , with a rib every . The arch was a slightly pointed design, with a reduced
radius of curvature at the springing points. The
Butterley Company was contracted to construct the arches. The total cost of the 24-rib roof and glazing was over £53,000, of which over half was for the main ribs. The cost of the gable end was a further £8,500. The single-span overall roof was the largest such structure in the world at the time of its completion. On the night of 10–11 May 1941 a bomb fell onto the station floor at platform 3, exploding in the beer vaults underneath. The station was not significantly damaged, but was closed for eight days, with platforms 2–3 remaining closed until June. In 1947 the St. Pancras junction was relaid with prefabricated trackwork, along with associated changes to the signalling system. On the creation of
British Railways (BR) in 1948, St Pancras received a significant investment after neglect by the LMS. Destinations included the London area services to North Woolwich,
St Albans and Bedford. Long-distance trains reached Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, with famous named trains including
The Palatine to Manchester,
The Thames-Clyde Express to Glasgow, and
The Master Cutler to Sheffield (transferred from King's Cross in 1966, which itself had transferred from eight years earlier). On 7 October 1957, the signalling at St Pancras was upgraded, replacing the three original boxes with a power box controlling 205 route switches and 33 points over a network of 1,400 relays. From 1960 to 1966, electrification work on the
West Coast Main Line between London and Manchester saw a new
Midland Pullman from Manchester to St Pancras. These trains and those to Glasgow were withdrawn following the completion of the rebuilding of Euston and the consolidation of these services. By the 1960s, St Pancras was seen as redundant, and several attempts were made to close it and demolish the hotel (by then known as St Pancras Chambers). These attempts provoked strong and successful opposition, with the campaign led by the later
Poet Laureate,
John Betjeman.
Jane Hughes Fawcett with the
Victorian Society was instrumental in its preservation, and was dubbed "the furious Mrs. Fawcett" by British rail officials. Many of the demonstrators had witnessed the demolition of the nearby
Euston Arch a few years previously and were strongly opposed to the distinctive architecture of St Pancras suffering the same fate. The station was given
Grade I listed building status in November 1967, preventing any drastic modifications. The plans were scrapped by BR in December 1968, realising that it was more cost-effective to modernise the hotel instead, though they disliked owning it. In the 1970s, the train shed roof was in danger of collapse, and the newly appointed Director of Environment
Bernard Kaukas persuaded the company to invest £3million to save it. In 1978, British Rail attempted to raise funds with the sale of the impressive 18 foot diameter station clock, allegedly to a wealthy American collector for £250,000. Custom made for St Pancras station by the world renown
Dent the unique time-piece was financially valuable, but during removal it was somehow dropped, shattering on the floor below. Now worth far less money, it was sold to Roland Hoggard, a train-guard nearing retirement, for £25. It took over a week for Hoggard to transport the giant broken clock, a few parts at a time, to his Nottinghamshire home, where he diligently pieced it all back together, to hang on the wall of his barn where it still kept good time. Decades later during the stations renewal as 'St Pancras International', Dent of London were able to create an exact replica of the clock by using the original as a template. Hoggard was invited to the 2007 grand re-opening of St Pancras, and able to see the impressive new clock installed exactly where the original had been. Also in 1978, a
Private Eye piece claimed that British Rail really wanted to demolish St Pancras but were opposed by "a lot of long-haired sentimentalists" and "faceless bureaucrats" and praised the office blocks that replaced the
Euston Arch. The station offices in the listed former Midland Grand Hotel building were subsequently refurbished in 1993, including a new roof with 275 tonnes of Westmorland Green slate. After the
sectorisation of British Rail in 1986, main-line services to the East Midlands were provided by the
InterCity sector, with suburban services to St Albans, Luton and Bedford by
Network SouthEast. In 1988 the
Snow Hill tunnel re-opened resulting in the creation of the Thameslink route and the resultant diversion of the majority of suburban trains to the new route. The station continued to be served by trains running on the Midland mainline to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, together with a few suburban services to Bedford and Luton. These constituted only a few trains an hour and left the station underused. A small number of trains to and from Leeds were introduced, mainly because the High-Speed Train sets were maintained there and were already running empty north of Sheffield. During the 2000s major rebuild of the West Coast Main Line, St Pancras again temporarily hosted direct and regular inter-city trains to Manchester, this time via the
Hope Valley route (via the Dore South curve) under the title of
Project Rio. ==International station==