Christchurch, Vale Square, Ramsgate

Between 1845-52, Pugin was building St Augustine's Abbey Church in Ramsgate. An appeal led by Lt. Hutchinson raised £8,000 to build a new church on the Westcliff and to counteract the effect of Pugin’s church. Sir George Gilbert Scott built Christchurch between 1846 and 1847, in a lancet style, but this was completely different to the lancet style associated with the Commissioners. It is a picturesque composition with hardly any external ornament; large areas of plain rugged walls, small windows and over-hanging roofs. It has a tower with a shingled spire and an octagonal vestry. It was, as John Newman says, an ‘earnest attempt to adopt medieval parish-church forms’.

Newman J., West Kent and the Weald, Buildings of England (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 410.