on 10 June 1954. Present organisation The church has a chaplaincy to the nearby St Pancras Hospital and since 1 June 2003 has formed part of the Old St Pancras Team Ministry (which also includes St Michael's Church, Camden Town, St Mary's Church, Somers Town and St Paul's Church, Camden Square). On 11 December 2007 it marked the opening of the nearby St Pancras International station with a bilingual service and a twinning with the Church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris, near the Gare du Nord, Paris. In 2013 an official appeals project was launched to raise the funds necessary to preserve the church and grounds. As a traditional Anglo-Catholic church that rejects the ordination of women as priests and bishops, it receives alternative episcopal oversight from the Bishop of Fulham (currently Jonathan Baker). Legendary origins As early as 1593 the cartographer John Norden had commented in his Speculum Britanniae that the dilapidated St Pancras church looked older than St Paul's Cathedral. By the 18th century there seems to have been a local belief that St Pancras was of very great age, perhaps the oldest church in England. The contemporary London historian William Maitland dismissed this as a "vulgar Tradition", and suggested that there was confusion with the ancient church with the same dedication in the grounds of St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury, which was said to have been converted from a pagan temple by St Augustine of Canterbury in 598. In 1870 local historian Samuel Palmer reported "This old and venerable church is said to be the first Christian place of worship in the county of Middlesex in the eighth or ninth century." Later attempts to prove an early date for the foundation of the church include the claim by J. Carter Rendell (vicar 1912–26) that a medieval altar slab marked with five consecration crosses, found during the 19th-century building works, could be dated to the 6th century. An earlier vicar is said to have claimed to have seen in the Vatican Library a manuscript mentioning that St Pancras church was built in the 9th century, and another to have seen a similar document placing the foundation in the 4th century. Information panels outside the church today state that it "stands on one of Europe’s most ancient sites of Christian worship, possibly dating back to the early 4th century" and has been a "site of prayer and meditation since 314 AD".