St Augustine's College, Canterbury

St Augustine’s College, in Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom, was located within the precincts of St Augustine's Abbey about 0.2 miles (335 metres) ESE of Canterbury Cathedral. It served first as a missionary college of the Church of England (1848-1947) and later as the Central College of the Anglican Communion (1952-1967).

The mid-19th century witnessed a "mass-migration" from England to its colonies. In response, the Church of England sent clergy, but the demand for them to serve overseas exceeded supply. Colonial bishoprics were established, but the bishops were without clergy. The training of missionary clergy for the colonies was “notoriously difficult” because they were required to have not only “piety and desire,” they were required to have an education “equivalent to that of a university degree.” The founding of the missionary college St. Augustine’s provided a solution to this problem.

The Revd Edward Coleridge, a teacher at Eton College, envisioned establishing a college for the purpose of training clergy for service in the colonies: both as ministers for the colonists and as missionaries to the native populations.

Coleridge’s vision was supported by the “high church Anglican network”, but it aroused opposition in low church circles as too much like a Roman Catholic seminary. Coupling the establishment of the college with the restoration of the ruins of St Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury attracted sufficient support for the college to be established.

The abbey had "reached its lowest point of degradation". The gate was the entrance to a brewery, the kitchen was a public house, the grounds were used for dancing and fireworks. This condition was the culmination of the abbey's dismantling and sale of material that began in 1541 after its closure by the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the English Reformation.

Appalled by the abbey's condition, Alexander Beresford Hope MP (a devoted and wealthy layman) purchased the abbey’s ruins and ground plot in 1844. Inspired by Edward Coleridge's vision of a missionary college, the work of establishing the college soon commenced. Funds were raised with Hope as the principal donor along with many other contributors including Queen Victoria. "New buildings arose, a new life seemed to come out of the old shadows that lay so long over and around the ruins." Hope was determined to restore the ancient appearance as much as possible and, in accordance with Hope’s desires, “pains were taken to preserve as much as possible of the old work that seemed worth preserving.” The Great Gate was refurbished and the college library was built over the foundation of what had been the abbey’s refectory. Beneath the library, the remains of an abbey crypt were restored and used for teaching carpentry and other handicrafts needed when the missionary graduates ventured into primitive conditions. The dormitories comprised a range of new buildings designed to blend in with the old. The architect for the reconstruction was William Butterfield.

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