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 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." Pugin bought the site in 1843 and immediately planned to build a church, to be constructed after he had built his home there. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. At his death, the church and eastern range were largely complete. However, his sons completed the north and west cloisters along with their chapels. The Digby Chantry Chapel (the Chapel of St John the Evangelist) was built in 1859, 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. == Parts of the site ==