The church was built in 1884-7 by the architect Hugh Roumieu Gough. The exterior is in red and black brick. The characteristic green copper roof was added in 1946 following severe bomb damage to the original slate roof. The project to replace the roof with the original Green Westmorland slate was backed by a major grant from the English Heritage Lottery Churches Fund. This project is now complete.
The church is remarkable for its interior, which is very ornate in the Arts and Crafts style of the late Victorian and Edwardian period.
Many of Gough's original fittings have survived, amongst them the pulpit (1887), the rood screen (1893) and the stations of the cross (1888). The interior was lavishly embellished between 1887 and 1914 by the vicar, Father Henry Westall, who added the overwhelming reredos, designed by Geldart (1899), which covers most of the East wall.
The Arts and Crafts designer Bainbridge Reynolds was a member of the congregation, and there are many fine examples of his work in the Church, notably the extraordinary lectern, which mixes virtually every kind of metalwork imaginable, and was famously described by John Betjeman as 'neo-viking'.
