When it was built its west front faced into the south-east corner of Euston Square, which had been laid out on either side of what was then simply known as the "New Road".

This had become neglected following a growth in population in the north of the parish, and by the early 19th century services were only held there once a month, worship at other times taking place in a chapel in Kentish Town.

It was carved with a Greek inscription, of which the English translation was "May the light of the blessed Gospel thus ever illuminate the dark temples of the Heathen".

The total cost of the building, including land and furnishings, was £76,679, making it the most expensive church to be built in London since the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral.

[5] Henry William Inwood was in Athens at the time that the plans for St Pancras were accepted,[6] and brought plaster casts of details of the Erechtheum, and some excavated fragments, back to England.

[5] The west end follows the basic arrangement of portico, vestibules and tower established by James Gibbs at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

At the east end is an apse, flanked by the church's most original features: two tribunes designed in imitation of the Erechtheum, with entablatures supported by caryatids.

Unlike those on the Erechtheum, each caryatid holds a symbolic extinguished torch or an empty jug, appropriate for their positions above the entrances to the burial vault.

The interior of the apse is in the form of one half of a circular temple, with six columns, painted to imitate marble, raised on a plinth.

[6] The interior includes a pulpit (once taller) and reading desk made from timber from the Fairlop Oak, a famous tree which grew in Hainault Forest at Ilford in Essex, and which fell in a storm in 1820.