History 1848-1904

IN THE BEGINNING - 1848
Although a church was not consecrated until 1853, it was in the momentous revolutionary year of 1848 that a committee first met to plan the fifth new district to come out of the Parish of St. Pancras. This area, now in the Borough of Camden, is known to have been inhabited for 4000 years. 2000 years before Christ the ancient Britons practised Druidism here, Primrose Hill being one of the sacred places of worship.

St. Pancras itself was named after a 14 year old boy from Asia Minor named Pancratius (A.D. 289-304), a convert to Christianity. He was beheaded by order of the Emperor Diocletian for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods. The old church of St. Pancras, traditionally older even than St. Paul’s Cathedral, was named after him.

By 1848, many European countries were experiencing political turmoil and revolutionary fervour, and Britain was not exempt. The elderly Iron Duke of Wellington was brought out of retirement to bolster London’s defences against the Chartist protestors, and in this same year Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (later to live in our Parish) published the Communist Manifesto - the first systematic statement of modern Socialist doctrine.

THE BUILDING OF ST MARK'S
If any one man can be called the ‘Founder’ of St. Mark’s it is surely the remarkable Evangelical churchman, Dr. Thomas Dale, later Canon Dale, the Vicar of St. Pancras. In the mid- 19th century, Dr Dale and his immediate predecessors had become gravely concerned by the increase in population in their area. After much effort Dale obtained agreement from the St. Pancras Church Extension Fund to provide support for clergymen to work in those parts of St. Pancras where there were as yet no churches. This resulted in the first committee meeting at 4 Albert Terrace, then only partially built, where the new district was planned.

Appointed to the pastoral care of this new district was a Scotsman and Graduate of Glasgow University, William Brown Galloway. At the time he was curate of St. Pancras Church and, like Dale, an Evangelical and prolific writer.

A temporary church was quickly erected at the corner of Princess Road, where 4 St. Mark’s Square and  36 Regent’s Park Road stand today. The building was duly licensed by the Bishop of London, Dr Blomfield, a great church builder, and opened for worship on 16 March 1848. An interesting statistic is that out of the 600 pews only a quarter were free. Pew rents were expected to be paid for the rest, as was then the custom in the Church of England.

It was Thomas Little, a local architect, who presented St. Pancras with the ground on which the church now stands. His plans for a building of Gothic design were approved by the committee, and a contract quoted at £6,546 was awarded to the company of Myers. On St. Mark’s Day, 25 April 1851, Dale came to lay the foundation stone of the permanent church.

Two years after the laying of the foundation stone the church was finally completed. Once again it was on St. Mark’s day that Bishop Blomfield consecrated the nave and the aisles. The Bishop preached a sermon, and after the service clergy and congregation were entertained at breakfast by the local Church Committee.

When the Committee met in December 1853 they felt justified, we are told, in incurring a large budget overspend and consequent debt of some £2000 in view of the pressing need of the district. So much of the area was being rapidly covered with houses that they expected the population would be doubled in a few years. The debt was finally cleared in 1859, the year of Little’s death.

An obituary in ‘The Builder’ of 31 December 1859 states that as a young man Little had practised as an architect and surveyor, but later concentrated on architecture. According to this obituary he was “much appealed to as an arbitrator, his strict honour and integrity being known”.

In 1858 William Galloway, being the natural choice, was appointed the first Vicar, but both he and the people of St. Mark’s had to wait another 38 years before the money could be raised to complete their chancel.

At the time of his retirement at 77 years of age, William Galloway claimed a congregation of more than a thousand. We can only imagine the scene on a Sunday morning with the tightly pewed and galleried church packed with locals, friends, family and children. Although William Galloway retired before the building of the chancel, he did see its completion, living to the age of 92, dying on 23 March 1903. A memorial tablet, put up by his friends in the year of his death, can be seen on the north wall of the church.

THE SPARROW AND THE CHANCEL
Galloway’s successor was Dr William Sparrow-Simpson, a high churchman, one of the most learned clerics of his day, and a prolific writer. He is best known for the text of Stainer’s ‘Crucifixion’, which includes the hymn ‘All for Jesus’. Whilst not equalling Galloway’s 40-year tenure, his 16 years made a huge contribution to the development of St. Mark’s.

Two years after he became Vicar permission was obtained to build the chancel, which was to correspond externally with Little’s original design. Sir Arthur Blomfield, son of the Bishop of London who had consecrated the nave in 1853, was asked to undertake the task. The foundation stone for the chancel was laid on All Saints’ Day, 1st November 1890. Mrs Temple, wife of the Bishop of London, performed the ceremony. Watching his mother was her nine year old son William, later to become Archbishop of Canterbury. The completed chancel was consecrated on 11th June 1891, and as part if this re-ordering the church's original galleries in the nave were removed.

Sadly, by the 1890s, the glory days of Galloway’s thousand-strong congregation were already a thing of the past. According to Charles Booth’s survey of the churches lying to the south of Chalk Farm published in 1902: “Not one is ever more than half full, unless it be St. Mark’s, to which many people are drawn from a distance, attracted by the extreme High Church practices adopted”. According to the same source, Sparrow-Simpson was “one of the finest preachers I have heard, who drew large congregations every Sunday to hear his sermons...”

In 1904 Sparrow-Simpson resigned to become Chaplain of St. Mary’s Hospital, Ilford. In this same year St. Mark’s also suffered the loss of its schools in a rationalisation of parish boundaries. Both the boys’ and girls’ had been opened in the time of Galloway. The building is now The Cavendish School in Arlington Road where the lion of St. Mark can still be seen.