Church Of St Augustin

Church of St Augustin, Wimbourne Road, Bournemouth

Built in 1891–2, designed by William Butterfield, this is the last church the architect created. It represents the third generation of High Anglican churches in Bournemouth that developed from the work of Reverend Alexander Morden Bennett of St Peter. The parish of St Augustin was formed in 1900 from St Stephen's parish (itself established as a memorial to Bennett in 1881).

The church is constructed of rock-faced Swanage stone with Bath stone dressings and has tiled roofs. Its plan comprises a three-and-a-half bay nave with lean-to aisles, a chancel, north-west and south-west porches, a north-east vestry, and a south-east vestry with organ chamber. The south-east vestry was added in 1930.

The exterior displays Decorated style tracery of around 1300. The most striking feature is the west gable, which bears an enclosed bell-turret with a short spire-like cap decorated with bands of scalloped ornament. The bell-turret is octagonal above the roofline, rising through small broaches from a very large square buttress that broadens further below, effectively bisecting the west wall of the nave like a small tower. The lean-to aisles leave only the narrowest gap between aisle and nave roofs, preventing any clerestory. The continuous rooflines of nave and aisles dominate the composition. On the north side facing the road, the aisle sits between a porch to the west and a vestry to the east. A transeptal organ chamber projects from the south, with the low south-east vestry added in 1930 to its east.

The interior is painted white. The chancel arch springs from corbels and features a double chamfer. The nave arcades consist of square piers continuous with the arches, with only a slight chamfer at the angles. The omission of capitals represents the only notably modern feature of St Augustin's design. The western nave bay has lower and narrower openings. The dark-stained nave roof displays thin scissor-braces that stand out starkly against the white ground. The aisle roof trusses are three-angled with a fretted frieze above the wall plates.

Butterfield designed the stone reredos, which incorporates red marble and mosaic patterning with a gabled centre bearing Early English style tracery beneath the arch. The pulpit and stalls are of dark stained oak, executed in the hard, deliberately heavy manner characteristic of Butterfield's later woodwork. Wrought-iron altar rails are present. The east end of the south aisle was reorganised as a chapel in 1932, with a parclose screen of 1936 in simplified Perpendicular style. The south chancel screen dates from 1961.

At the church's west end stands Butterfield's font, an octagonal stone bowl with a frieze of inverted scallops, mounted on a very thick stem surrounded by eight pink marble colonnettes. It has a very tall Gothic font cover of around 1952, painted and gilded with pierced buttressing and needle-like pinnacles.

Stained glass is abundant. The east window, designed by Butterfield and executed by Bell & Beckham in 1892, features rather gaudy colouring. The north aisle contains three windows: by Kempe & Co. (1920), Percy Bacon (1924), and Lavers & Westlake (1898). The south aisle has two windows by Clayton & Bell (1900) and three by Lavers & Westlake (1898). The pair of vibrant west windows (each of two lights) are by Karl Parsons (1932). The chancel has patterned encaustic tiled floors, while the nave has wood block floors with carpeted walkways. The original bench pews designed by Butterfield remain in place.

A churchyard cross stands east of the chancel, commemorating Canon Henry Twells, the hymnologist and chief benefactor of the church, who died in 1900.

A church hall of squared rubble and white brick, designed by architects Dexter & Staniland and built in 1970–1, stands against the church's west end. Its north front features a shallow bowed centre with vertical glazing between buttress-like stone mullions.

A vicarage was built immediately west of the church around 1902–4 but was vacated in 1942; the present church hall occupies this site.

William Butterfield (1814–1900) was one of the greatest church architects of the 19th century. His career flourished from the mid-1840s, when the influential Cambridge Camden (later Ecclesiological) Society championed him as one of their favourite architects. In the 1850s, he designed the great church of All Saints, Margaret Street, London, which pioneered new approaches to Victorian church-building with its brick facing and extensive polychrome detailing. Butterfield's remarkable originality manifested in bold and inventive uses of geometry and colour. A devout High Churchman, his clients were typically like-minded. His later churches, however, rarely matched the ambition of his early work.