Church of St Mary and St Augustine, Stamford

The church (originally Our Lady & St Augustine, following continental Catholic practice and described as such by Nikolaus Pevsner[1]) was built on the north side of Stamford's Broad Street on the site of the Dolphin public house.

The church is lighted with four corona or stars of 15 gas jets each, the effect of which upon the altar and reredos and the numerous accessories they contain is gorgeous and is consequently very imposing…" Pevsner reviewed the building without much enthusiasm however – albeit at a time when Victoriana was not highly thought of.

Four bishops participated in the ceremony – Roskell of Nottingham, Amherst of Northampton, the retired William Wareing and Grant of Southwark, as well as the mitred abbot of Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire, attended by thirty further clergy.

[6] After the ceremony Charles Ormston Eaton presided over a celebratory lunch at the George Hotel where besides the clergy and the architect, Goldie, other guests included the Marchioness of Lothian, a Lady Fitzgerald and various local dignitaries, before the party returned to church at 3pm for Benediction and a sermon by an eminent Jesuit preacher from London.

Inside, despite some attempts in the past to dispose of it, a large mid-nineteenth century statue of the Madonna and Child by Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich stands in the small Lady Chapel that Goldie had designed expressly for the purpose.

The organ, by J. W. Walker & Sons Ltd, was donated in 1866 by Charles Ormston Eaton and remains in full working order, and the church's bell, a tenor G, was cast by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough and placed in the campanile in 1871.

Since Goldie's other works included Cardinal Manning's Our Lady of Victories, Kensington and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Sligo, and could be found elsewhere across England, Scotland and Ireland, and even as far afield as Durban, South Africa, St Augustine's remains one of the few Victorian buildings in Stamford designed by an architect of more than merely local reputation.