St Augustine'S College And The Abbey School

St Augustine's College and the Abbey School

A convent, church, school and presbytery built between 1905 and 1915 by architect F A Walters for the community of the Canonesses of St Augustine, who had been expelled from France under anti-clerical laws in 1904. Only the chapel and the range attached to its west belong to the finest phase of Walters's work, which extended over a long period at this site.

The Chapel, designed by F A Walters in 1910, is in Early Decorated style. Its walls are faced with roughcast with stone window surrounds, brick dressings and a slate roof. The building is cruciform in plan, with a nuns' choir occupying the nave, transepts serving as the public part of the chapel, and a sanctuary at the crossing of the nave and transepts. Beyond the sanctuary to the east is a Lady Chapel with an apsidal end. The nuns' choir contained 120 stalls.

The ritual east front, facing the road, is symmetrical with a central tall five-bay apse. Windows are double pointed lancets with trefoils above, set in stone surrounds. A central blocked window has a stone statue in a niche. Hipped aisles flank either side of the apse, each with a tall arched opening containing a lancet. The west side of the transepts has two arched windows with two lancets and a trefoil above. Arched doorcases are positioned throughout. Two hipped side chapels on either side of the apse have double Caernarvon-arched windows each. The nave has arched windows with triple lancets and trefoil decoration above the side windows. The south transept is gabled and constructed of brick with a cross-shaped saddlestone. It features an immense roughcast arch incorporating two tall lancets and an oval window above. The north transept has three small lancets and an attached single-storey roughcast gabled structure with one three-light window. The west front has a tall brick turret with a stone spirelet surmounted by an iron cross.

The interior of the church features a nave with a ribbed wooden barrel-vaulted ceiling supported on elongated stone corbels. Along the south and north walls runs a row of nuns' stalls with trefoliated heads. An octagonal carved pulpit stands at the north east end, and the pavement is tiled. The chancel contains an elaborate stone reredos with blank arcading at its base and a pierced screen above, surmounted by a statue of the Virgin Mary within an architectural surround.

Attached to the west of the chapel are the Abbey School Buildings and Presbytery, built between 1905 and 1907 and extended south between 1911 and 1915 in a related but less distinguished style. This is an asymmetrical building of roughcast with brick dressings, slate roof and roughcast chimney stacks.

The buildings comprise several distinct sections. At the extreme left is a single-storey link block with a slate roof and three dormers, featuring five arched windows separated by brick pilasters with stone coping. Attached to the right is a four-storey gable with three full-height lancets flanked by side buttresses. The side lancets have elaborate blank niches, while the central lancet contains a four-light casement on the third floor. The first and second floors have arched window surrounds with mullioned and transomed windows and trefoil decoration. An arched doorcase features a carved stone tympanum with a statue.

To the right of this section is a two-storey wing with two tiers of attics topped by two gabled three-light dormers and two three-light flat-roofed dormers below. The first floor has five mullioned and transomed windows set in arches, while the ground floor has arched windows with two lancets and a circular window above. A gable at the end contains a four-light window, and a tall tower with a hipped roof and slit windows projects upward.

The Presbytery projects forward at the end, a two-storey building of roughcast with slate roof and roughcast chimneys. Its front has two gable ends. The first floor is lit by two three-light casements, while the ground floor has four mullioned and transomed casements.

Later and less significant ranges to the rear date from 1908 to 1915.

The architect's youngest daughter joined the community in 1907, and in 1962 she became Mother Mary Joseph, Reverend Mother Vicar of the Canonesses of St Augustine in England.