diff --git a/wagtail/contrib/wagtailfrontendcache/purger.py b/wagtail/contrib/wagtailfrontendcache/purger.py
index ca00408e2..250f62840 100644
--- a/wagtail/contrib/wagtailfrontendcache/purger.py
+++ b/wagtail/contrib/wagtailfrontendcache/purger.py
@@ -1,14 +1,33 @@
-from urlparse import urlparse, urlunparse
 import requests
+from requests.adapters import HTTPAdapter
 
 from django.conf import settings
 
 
+class CustomHTTPAdapter(HTTPAdapter):
+    """
+    Requests will always send requests to whatever server is in the netloc
+    part of the URL. This is a problem with purging the cache as this netloc
+    may point to a different server (such as an nginx instance running in
+    front of the cache).
+
+    This class allows us to send a purge request directly to the cache server
+    with the host header still set correctly. It does this by changing the "url"
+    parameter of get_connection to always point to the cache server. Requests
+    will then use this connection to purge the page.
+    """
+    def __init__(self, cache_url):
+        self.cache_url = cache_url
+        super(CustomHTTPAdapter, self).__init__()
+
+    def get_connection(self, url, proxies=None):
+        return super(CustomHTTPAdapter, self).get_connection(self.cache_url, proxies)
+
+
 def purge_page_from_cache(page):
-    # Build purge url
-    varnish_url = urlparse(getattr(settings, 'WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE_LOCATION', 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/'))
-    page_url = urlparse(page.url)
-    purge_url = urlunparse((varnish_url.scheme, varnish_url.netloc, page_url.path, page_url.params, page_url.query, page_url.fragment))
+    varnish_url = getattr(settings, 'WAGTAILFRONTENDCACHE_LOCATION', 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/')
 
     # Purge
-    requests.request('PURGE', purge_url)
+    session = requests.Session()
+    session.mount('http://', CustomHTTPAdapter(varnish_url))
+    session.request('PURGE', page.full_url)