Birthday concert series for Pugin at St. Augustine’s Ramsgate

•       Saturday 22nd February  8.15pm  – Quodlibet: “Dangerous Candlelight,” and explanatory lecture

•       Saturday 8th March 7pm  – Victoria Consort: “Allegri Miserere by Candlelight; Passiontide Music”

•       Saturday 15th March  7.30pm  – Thames Chamber Choir: “O Magnum Mysterium: sacred music from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries”

o       Tickets may be purchased by ringing 01843 850829, or in person at St. Augustine’s and St. Ethelbert’s churches in Ramsgate, or on the door. Tickets for the last concert may also be purchased at tccramsgate.eventbrite.co.uk

o       Prices for the concerts are all £10 per person, with £7.50 concessions for the last concert.

A series of three concerts will be held at the church be built in Ramsgate to mark Augustus Pugin’s birthday. Over three Saturdays from the end of February to the middle of March a diverse range of choral music will be performed by choirs from Kent and further afield.

The concerts will be entertaining evenings. Rector of St. Augustine’s, Fr. Marcus Holden, said, “These promise to be excellent concerts, taking place in such an atmospheric building as St. Augustine’s. Pugin built this church to be a special place, and these concerts will fill it with special music.” The first concert, by Quodlibet, will begin with an explanatory lecture to set their music in its historical and cultural context.

St. Augustine’s is a major Ramsgate site, developing as a shrine to St. Augustine, a centre of Pugin studies and enthusiasm, and as a tourist attraction, as well as a concert venue. It has previously hosted concerts by Jesus College, Cambridge, the Merry Opera Company, and Thomas Bowes. It attracts many people with interest in Pugin’s work, as well as religious pilgrims, school groups and tourists.

Augustus Pugin was born in 1812 and died in Ramsgate aged 40, having built his house, The Grange, and his own church, St. Augustine’s, next door. He was one of the most prolific and influential architects of the nineteenth century, driving the Gothic Revival which shifted architecture away from the symmetrical Regency style, designing many significant buildings and parts of the Houses of Parliament, and he has even been credited with foreshadowing designs of famous modern structures such as the Lloyd’s Building in the City of London.