Set high on a gentle rise above the highway, this modest Gothic Revival church was established in response to the number of British sugar planters resident in the Kohala district. So British was this district, it was sometimes referred to as “Little Britain.” The shiplap-sided church has a small bell tower and an open scissors truss on the interior. The oak altar, lectern, reredos, and font were carved in England from trees grown at Loxley Hall, an estate of the Sneyd-Kynnersleys, who were members of the congregation.
Three miles along the highway from St. Augustine's, at Makapala, sits St. Paul's Episcopal Church, a near contemporaneous and similarly styled church. Consecrated in 1889, it served a Chinese congregation, which had formed in 1882 at Niulii Plantation. From St. Paul's would spring St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Honolulu (OA43). The Chinese inscription over the koa altar in St. Paul's reads, “Your heart should long for the Lord.”