St Osmund’s church comprises a nave, chancel, tower, south aisle and sacristy which were designed by A. W. N. Pugin and built in 1847-8, plus a north aisle which was added by E Doran Webb in 1894. The church was consecrated on 6 September 1848.

Pugin had lived on the outskirts of Salisbury between 1835-37 and converted to Catholicism in 1835 while living there. Friendships made at this time meant that when the Catholics of Salisbury were eager to move out of temporary rooms and to build a church, they turned to Pugin for the designs.

Pugin had always seen Salisbury Cathedral as ‘both an inspiration and an agony’; an inspiration because it had been ‘the supreme work of the Catholic mind’, and an agony because much of its wonder ‘had been shattered by reforming zeal’. St Osmund’s was intended to be an ‘inexpensive miniature’ which would ‘replace the Cathedral as a home for the Mass’. Interestingly it is located immediately outside the wall of the Cathedral Close and almost in line with the eastern end of the Cathedral. It is dedicated to St Osmund whose shrine is in the Cathedral, and the eastern window depicts Saints Osmund, Thomas of Canterbury and Martin, the latter two being the dedications of two of the other medieval churches in Salisbury.

Any building designed by Pugin is architecturally important and St Osmund’s is no exception. Despite extension and reordering it is still a fine example of his ‘small church’ design with some exceptional Pugin designed stained glass, one window having been presented to the church by Pugin.

For further information see John Elliott, ‘Pugin, St Osmund and Salisbury’ in Ecclesiology Today, 22 April 2000 and Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect: Pugin & the Building of Romantic Britain, Allen Lane 2007, pp. 374, 410 & 516.