St Augustine’s Parish Family

Your Neighbourhood Area

Our parish is so large in numbers and area that it is very difficult to create the sense of a single community in which everyone knows and cares for each other. As part of our celebration of the 1400th anniversary in 1997 of St Augustine’s arrival in Kent, and as part of our preparation for celebrating the year 2000, we decided to create about 150 small neighbourhood areas in the parish, ‘clustering’ together known Catholic homes into groups of between 10 and 20 in a local area.

Many of these areas now have a parish link person or couple, whose role is to represent the parish community. They will visit you at times, in order to keep you in touch with the parish and its life, and to bring together the various Catholics in your area. They have a ministry of welcome and of unity, working closely with the priests and deacon. (See the page on ‘Operation Augustine’ later)

where are we?

Although St Augustine’s Church is at the centre of the town, many people have great difficulty in finding it. There is no spire or tower to look for, and you can easily miss it. If you find the central cross-roads in Tunbridge Wells, with the Town Hall on one corner, Lloyds Bank on another, then you are only a few minutes walk from us. Take the road which has the Town Hall on the left and Lloyds Bank on the right: this is Crescent Road. You will pass the Assembly Hall and the Police Station on your left, and the Hotel du Vin and some apartments on your right . Immediately after the apartments, you will find our church on the right (opposite a multi-storey car park). There is a small car-park at the back of the church for weekday visits, but we recommend you park in the multi-storey on Sundays.

who are we?

St Augustine’s is an active parish of nearly 1300 people at Mass every Sunday, along with those Catholics in our area who do not worship with us regularly. It is a very mixed community, across every age range. There are many residential and nursing homes in the town, and we are delighted to have many elderly parishioners, plenty of whom are still very active in the parish. There is also a large number of young families: at Mass most Sundays there are well over 200 children under 11, as well as nearly 200 teenagers. Tunbridge Wells is also far more socially mixed than many outsiders would think true of a town such as ours.

We try at St Augustine’s to involve parishioners as fully as possible in the worship and life of the parish. Many people participate in different ways, whether in liturgical ministries or in positions of responsibility in the life of our community.

how far do we go?

St Augustine’s parish covers far more than the town of Tunbridge Wells. Its southern boundary is the Kent/Sussex border, and it reaches from the outskirts of Pembury to Ashurst. Our parish includes the villages of Fordcombe, Penshurst, Speldhurst, Rusthall, Langton Green and the Kent part of Groombridge.

from the 19th to the 21st centuries

The story of St Augustine’s begins in 1838 when Jesuits arrived to start a small mission. They built the first St Augustine’s Church on the corner of Hanover Rd and Grosvenor Rd, where Tesco’s now stands. Although there were only 50 Catholics within walking or riding district, they had the foresight to build a church big enough for 250 people. Jesuit priests nurtured the small community until 1866, when they handed it over to Thomas Grant, the first Bishop of Southwark. The first diocesan priest at Tunbridge Wells was Father (later Canon) Joseph Searle. There was little money in the small Catholic community, but the people were prepared to walk long distances to Mass. Canon Searle did great work until his death in 1899.

His work was continued by Father Charles Stapley (1900-1905) and Canon James Keating (1905-1923). Father Herbert Evans, sent to St Augustine’s in 1923 to take care of the parish while Canon Keating was ill, died tragically after just two months, before the Canon himself. During this time, Corpus Christi church at Tonbridge was opened and was served from Tunbridge Wells, and eventually became a separate parish. Assisted by numerous fine curates, further parish priests led the community forward: Father George Boniface (1923-1940), Father (later Canon) Edward Fennessy (1940-1945), Father Arthur Dudley (1945-1949) and Father John Stevenson (1949-1967). In 1950 a Mass centre was opened in Southborough, which eventually became the separate parish of St Dunstan’s. In subsequent years, Mass centres in Ramslye, Penshurst, Sherwood and Rusthall came and went.

In 1959, Father Bill Howell came to St Augustine’s as assistant priest, but he soon took over care of the parish when Father Stevenson fell ill, and became parish priest himself when Father Stevenson died. The major change in Fr Bill’s time was the closure of the old church in 1967. It was in bad repair, with serious damp problems, and was too small for the growing congregation (it was built to seat 250, whereas congregations of over 350 were and are very common). The site in Hanover Road was sold to Tesco. Mass was celebrated for a time at Sacred Heart School (Beechwood), and then in the hall above the newly built Tesco’s (St Tesco’s!) until the new church was built on the present site. Building began in 1974, and the church was opened in October 1975. Fr Bill served the parish with tremendous dedication for 36 years, 28 years as parish priest, building a thriving parish community which went from strength to strength. He moved on from Tunbridge Wells in 1995 to be parish priest of Cliftonville, but has since retired. He was succeeded as parish priest by Canon (now Bishop) Michael Evans, and then by Fr Peter Stodart in 2003..

Anyone who would like to read further can buy a copy of our parish history, One Cog by Ted Marchant, from the parish office or the parish shop for 50p.

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