1) The patron saint of teenagers, supposedly beheaded at the age of 14 by Diocletian during the Roman persecution of Christians in 304. His feast day is May 12. St Augustine, one of the founders of Christianity in England, dedicated his first church to him, and his relics were presented as a gift to the King of Northumbria.
2) Parish of North London named for St Pancras Old Church, the oldest church in London, which has Roman foundations and dates back to the fourth century. Once a peaceful village arranged round a bend of the River Fleet, St Pancras was almost destroyed in the nineteenth century by the building of the Regent's Canal and the Great Midland Railway: its river was diverted and covered over, its fields turned into industrial wasteland and cheap housing for the railway and factory workers, its few good houses split into rooms to house the large immigrant population, mostly from France, who flocked to the area after the French revolution. Charles Dickens, in Our Mutual Friend, describes the area behind the station: "a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs were fought, and dust was heaped by contractors." The modern St Pancras is still largely an industrial wasteland, notable for the old church, the beautiful station, and the new British Library which contains one of the finest collections of books in the world.
3) Railway station built in the grand Victorian Gothic style: a fabulous building. The train shed is a beautiful glass cage with ornate iron girders, designed by R. M. Ordish and W. H. Barlow, which was the largest in the world at the time of construction in 1863. The station's front, originally an hotel, was added between 1868 and 1874 and designed by Gilbert Scott. It's built of brick, with granite pillars. It has towers and arches, gargoyles and dragons, spires and tiles and mouldings galore, and sculptures of railwaymen in its original Victorian ticket hall.