Church Of St Mary And St Augustine, Stamford

The Parish Church of St Mary and St Augustine in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England, is home to a congregation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nottingham. St Augustine's (as it is generally known) was designed in a "robust High Victorian Early English" style by George Goldie, one of the foremost Catholic architects in England in the nineteenth century. It was built over 1862-64 and while much of its Victorian interior was stripped out in the middle decades of the twentieth century, it still retains some furnishings and fittings of distinction. Foundation and exteriorThe church was built on the north side of Stamford's Broad Street on the site of the Dolphin public house. It replaced an earlier place of worship, a chapel in the Gothic style situated in All Saints Street, which functioned between 1834 and 1864 and which in the 1830s was one of only six Catholic chapels in Lincolnshire. Prior to this, during the anti-Catholic penal laws, Mass had been celebrated secretly in some of Stamford's numerous cellars, in particular, that of no. 24, High Street Saint Martin's. The first resident parish priest of this post-Reformation parish, between 1833 and 1838, was William Wareing, who in 1850 became the first Bishop of Northampton on the Restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy.

The Parish Church of St Mary and St Augustine in Stamford, Lincolnshire, England, is home to a congregation of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nottingham. St Augustine's (as it is generally known) was designed in a "robust High Victorian Early English" style by George Goldie, one of the foremost Catholic architects in England in the nineteenth century. It was built over 1862-64 and while much of its Victorian interior was stripped out in the middle decades of the twentieth century, it still retains some furnishings and fittings of distinction. Foundation and exteriorThe church was built on the north side of Stamford's Broad Street on the site of the Dolphin public house. It replaced an earlier place of worship, a chapel in the Gothic style situated in All Saints Street, which functioned between 1834 and 1864 and which in the 1830s was one of only six Catholic chapels in Lincolnshire. Prior to this, during the anti-Catholic penal laws, Mass had been celebrated secretly in some of Stamford's numerous cellars, in particular, that of no. 24, High Street Saint Martin's. The first resident parish priest of this post-Reformation parish, between 1833 and 1838, was William Wareing, who in 1850 became the first Bishop of Northampton on the Restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy.