St Augustine's Cross
Hidden on the outskirts of Ramsgate in our stomping ground of Kent, is a plot of land that is said to have been the place where St Augustine met King Ethelbert for the very first time. This spot is marked by the St Augustine's Cross. You'd like to think that after so many sites have been named after the saint in Canterbury, the dedications would have ended there. But no, back in 1884 Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville decided to mark the spot after he learned of the tradition where an oak tree called Augustine's Oak was the place where the saint met the King. Well the Oak was felled and so he decided that a new marker would need to be placed, and this was a fairly important man, he was the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as well as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. So he commissioned the cross. John Roddis of Birmingham sourced the same stone that was used to build Glastonbury Abbey and set to work carving it into a design that was based on the ...
