St Augustine's Church, Ramsgate

St Augustine brought Christianity to the English for the first time in AD 597, landing very close to the site of St Augustine's. After his death (c.604), his tomb soon became a shrine. This shrine, which was enlarged and moved over the centuries, was destroyed under the orders of King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell in 1538, and St Augustine's remains in Canterbury were destroyed. Some relics of the saint had been sent to Europe as gifts in previous centuries.

St Augustine's was built by the renowned architect and designer Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin – most famous for his designs of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster – between 1845 and his death in 1852. This is the only church he built funded by himself. According to the Pugin Society, it is the pinnacle and most personal of Pugin's designs, "full of the character of its designer."[1]

Pugin bought the site in 1843 and immediately planned to build a church, to be constructed after he had built his home there.[2][3] First he built his home (The Grange) into which he moved with his family in late October 1844 when he was 32 years old. The next year he began construction of St Augustine's, and gave it to the Vicar Apostolic of the London District on 19 November 1846.[4] Pugin's attraction to Ramsgate was grounded in his Aunt Selina, his love of the sea (he particularly liked sailing) and his devotion to St Augustine of Canterbury.[5] He had visited his aunt several times at Rose Hill Cottage, he spent some time in Ramsgate renting a house in Plains of Waterloo, and he lived with his second wife, Louisa, in a cottage close to St Laurence Church. He also had a particular interest in his patron saint, St Augustine of Canterbury, who had landed at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet, just a mile or so from where he bought land in Ramsgate. As he wrote in a letter, this is "where blessed Austin landed."

Although St Augustine's is now considered to be close to the centre of Ramsgate, in the mid-nineteenth century Pugin's land was on the western edge of the town. His painting A True Prospect shows countryside surrounding the site: in fact, these areas had already been laid out in building plots which were being sold, but St Augustine's was initially on the edge of the town.

The first part completed was the schoolroom in 1846.[6] This building served as the first church, and so was the first public Catholic building in Ramsgate since the Reformation (Pugin's house, completed 1844 contained a chapel which was used for Mass). In this building, Pugin also ran a free school for local children. This enterprise closed soon after Pugin discovered that the children were stealing his coal, though it later became part of St Augustine's College run by the monks.

On 19 November 1846 Pugin gave the whole project legally to the Vicar Apostolic of the London District.[3] Although Pugin continued to build the church as he designed and paid for it, he was anxious that the property should be held by the Church as soon as possible. This ownership has been vested in the Archdiocese of Southwark since the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850.

Next completed was the rest of the east range (including upstairs rooms and the sacristy) in 1846. The church building followed slowly until it was roofed in on 28 July 1849. This included the chantry chapel that Pugin designed to be over the burial place for himself and his family.

Pugin designed St Augustine's to be aligned east–west, which is the traditional alignment of churches, symbolising the priest and people facing the sunrise (which itself is a symbol of Christ's coming as the light of the world) during Mass. To make the church as long as possible on a comparatively narrow plot, Pugin had to build right up to the plot's eastern boundary. To avoid having a building directly next to his great east window, he engaged the owner of the plot immediately east of the church with the hope of buying a strip of that plot. The owner, Matthew Habershon, had a dislike of Pugin and made him pay a large amount of money for the land, £450 (the plot for St Augustine's and The Grange had been £700). Habershon then built Chartham Terrace on his own plot – a tall building that deliberately attempted to cut out light from Pugin's window.[7] Chartham Terrace, despite its similarity to St Augustine's with its knapped flint exterior, is not a Pugin building. This whole collection of buildings models Pugin's ideas of what constitutes a good society, based on an understanding of the Middle Ages with the local community served in education, healthcare, spiritual care, and employment by a monastery and benefactors, all based around a church.

Pugin died on 14 September 1852 in The Grange. A few hours before he had entered St Augustine's and remarked how beautiful it is.[8] At his death, the church and eastern range were largely complete. However, his sons completed the north and west cloisters along with their chapels.[9] The Digby Chantry Chapel (the Chapel of St John the Evangelist) was built in 1859,[10] and St Joseph's Chapel was built in 1893 by Viscountess Southwell to mark the coming of age of her son, who had been educated at the monks' school in Ramsgate (St Augustine's College).[11] The central tower of the church, with its spire, was never completed.

In 1856, monks were invited by Bishop Thomas Grant of the Archdiocese of Southwark to make a foundation in Ramsgate. Dom Wilfrid Alcock, an Englishman who had become a monk in Italy, was sent by the Subiaco Congregation of the Benedictine Order to found the monastery in Ramsgate.[12] Initially the community lived in St Edward's (the presbytery next door, built by Pugin), and later moved into the purpose-built monastery across the road, built by Edward Pugin.[12] The church was used as the abbey church from 1856 until the monks moved their community to Chilworth, Surrey, in 2011.[13]

On 1 March 2012, the 200th anniversary of Pugin's birth, Archbishop Peter Smith created St Augustine's as the shrine of St Augustine of England.[14] Thus 474 years after the destruction of St Augustine's shrine in Canterbury on the orders of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, the shrine was restored. The priests of the Oxford Oratory donated a relic believed to be part of a bone from St Augustine.

The writer and journalist Clive Aslet has called for the site to be made a World Heritage Site.[17][18]

This site is part of a grander scheme: Pugin's house, the presbytery, and the monastery across the road. This was part of Pugin's social reformist vision, as well as his architectural and design vision. He was able here to do as he wished because he was his own paymaster, and so it is an example of Pugin's principles and values. The woodwork, metalwork, stonework, encaustic tiles, stained glass, and more, are all important in this site.

The original shrine had been established c. AD 604 when St Augustine died. He was buried in a small chapel on the north side of his monastery church outside the city walls in Canterbury. His shrine became popular, and in 968 Archbishop Dunstan rededicated the whole monastery to St Augustine (it had previously been dedicated only to SS Peter and Paul, the dedication originally given by St Augustine).

In 1091 St Augustine's body was moved ('translated') to a bigger purpose-built shrine at the eastern end of St Augustine's Abbey. The records say how elaborate his original shrine had become, and later records and plans show how elaborate his later shrine became. It was extensively remodelled several times in the following four and a half centuries. Kings, queens, nobles, clergy, monks, nuns, and countless ordinary people came to pay homage to St Augustine, who was called "Apostle of the English."

In 1538, St Augustine's Abbey was dissolved as part of the English Reformation. This ended almost one thousand years of monastic life on the site and devotion to St Augustine. Some relics had been taken from the body at various times, and, although most of the body was destroyed (along with most of the shrine) at the dissolution of the abbey, some relics survived elsewhere.

In 2012 the Fathers of the Oxford Oratory gave a small piece of bone, which is one of the surviving pieces of St Augustine's body, to St Augustine's. On 1 March 2012, Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark formally created St Augustine's as the shrine of St Augustine of England. This was 474 years after the destruction of the original shrine.

Saints days of particular importance at St Augustine's:

• 25 February – St Ethelbert
• 12 March – St Gregory the Great (traditional feast)
• 26 May – St Augustine of Canterbury (traditional feast in England)
• 27 May – St Augustine of Canterbury
• 13 July – St Mildred
• 3 September – St Gregory the Great
• 15 September – Our Lady of Sorrows

Other significant days at St Augustine's:

• 1 March – Pugin's birthday (1812)
• 14 September – Pugin's day of death (1852)

Each year St Augustine's hosts two festival weeks: St Augustine Week and Pugin Week to celebrate these two central figures. St Augustine Week is in late May, around St Augustine's Day on 26/27 May. Pugin Week is held around the day of Pugin's death on 14 September.

In 2017 a new Education, Research, and Visitor Centre will open in the buildings on the site. It will educate people about St Augustine and Augustus Pugin, and their internationally important legacies.

Funding has been secured through many donations from private individuals and charitable trusts. The Heritage Lottery Fund has given most of the funding, and is supporting the development of the project.

• 
  Abbey cemetery from The Grange, Ramsgate
• 
  Chancel as rearranged in 1970
• 
  Pugin Chantry Chapel altar

• St Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate

• Shrine of St Augustine & National Pugin Centre site
• 360° Virtual tour of Shrine of St. Augustine