St Augustine's Abbey with perimeter wall

St Augustine's Abbey with Perimeter Wall

St Augustine's Abbey is a monastic complex comprising a main cruciform building with ranges of different periods, enclosed by a perimeter wall with gatehouse and porter's lodge, together with a separate library building to the west. The abbey was established as a 19th-century religious foundation and represents a significant example of Victorian ecclesiastical architecture.

The core of the complex is a cruciform building arranged around an enclosed cloister. Edward Welby Pugin designed the original L-shaped block of 1860–1861, comprising a two-storey south range and two-storey west range. Pugin's son, Peter Paul Pugin, added a three-storey east range in 1904. In 1937, Winmill added a short north range. Cloister-like corridors enclosed within each range provide access to the main communal spaces: the refectory occupies the west range, the chapter room is in the south range, and the calefactory (common room) and oratory (chapel) are in the east range. A covered passageway connects the south range to a porter's lodge built into the perimeter wall. To the west, a library designed by Purcell in 1926 is joined to the west range by a link building of 1976.

The buildings of 1860 and 1904 are faced in knapped flint with bands of yellow stock brick and Bath stone, with dressings of matching materials. Plain and scalloped tiles, laid in alternating bands, form the roofs, which are decorated with cresting along the ridge; originally broad rectangular ridge stacks topped the roofs, but most are now truncated. The architectural style is High Victorian domestic Gothic with individual details, notably cogged brick heads to the ground-floor window apertures. Ground-floor windows are principally paired lancets with leaded glazing; upper windows are rectangular sashes with flat or segmental heads (some replaced in UPVC). The top-floor windows rise into gabled dormers with curved barge-boards and metal cresting.

Pugin's south range terminates in a double gable containing two two-light traceried windows lighting the former first-floor oratory. The west elevation displays two plate-traceried windows of the chapter room; between them is a prominent carved doorway. Its lintel, supported on angel corbels, bears the motto "ille autem tacebat" (from Mark 14:61, meaning 'he held his peace, and said nothing'). Another plate-traceried window lights the former library at the end of the west range. Peter Paul Pugin's east range is similarly detailed but rises three storeys and makes greater use of stone for dressings and carved ornament. It terminates in a slightly projecting cross-wing with a quatrefoil panel in the gable and a tall tracery-headed niche below.

A high flint wall with brick bands and buttresses encloses the abbey precinct. To the south stand twin gate-piers and a gabled porter's lodge. To the west, Winmill's vehicle entrance of 1935 features double boarded gates beneath a pyramid-roofed timber canopy.

The interior is accessed from the porter's lodge via a low passageway with an open timber roof leading to the south wing. Here are two parlours (rooms for monastic meetings with external visitors) set back to back, each with ornamental stone fireplaces; one fireplace displays a relief apparently showing St Benedict preaching to fellow monks. An arched doorway marks the entrance to the enclosed part of the site.

Four radiating corridors run the length of the main wings from a long axial corridor running northward. These corridors are floored with black and white quarry tiles and divided by pointed transverse arches into square bays, each lit by a pair of lancet windows with a moulded central column. Six-panel doors in moulded stone surrounds provide access to principal rooms.

The refectory in the west wing has simple dado panelling, a floor of red and yellow tiles with an agnus dei tile towards its eastern end, and carved capitals to the window columns. In 1936 this room was extended westward to incorporate the former library, whose end wall displays a stained glass quatrefoil thought to be by Geoffrey Webb, depicting the Trinity.

The 1904 east wing contains the calefactory and oratory. The oratory has banks of fixed timber seating including a canopied abbot's stall. The south wing houses the chapter room, which features twin bay windows with window seats. Adjacent to this is the principal stair, its scrolled handrail supported on slender metal uprights.

The upper floors contain monks' cells arranged on either side of top-lit spine corridors. Each cell has a single window and a simple stone fireplace. At the end of the south range is the former oratory, a T-shaped space with a high two-light window. An adjoining cell, presumably for a sick monk, has a squint affording a direct view of the high altar. One cell in the west range communicates with a small sitting room and would have accommodated visiting bishops.

Purcell's library of 1926 stands to the west of the main building. This is a tall gabled structure in Tudor-Gothic style, flint-walled with banding and dressings of red brick and stone. The side walls feature stepped buttresses. The west elevation has three large three-light transomed windows; the east side displays a tall projecting chimney stack.

The library interior is a single space lined with bookshelves, surrounded on three sides by tiers of timber galleries with moulded uprights and openwork balustrades. These galleries were altered and extended at some point before 1945. The roof structure comprises polygonal trusses reinforced by iron tie rods.