The dedication All Hallows, meaning all saints, suggests a Saxon foundation, although the earliest surviving reference is in a document of 1227.

Although not badly damaged, it was taken down to save money on repairs[2] In 1551, the church was closed for a month following a fight between two priests, in which blood was drawn.

[1] In 1555, during the reign of Queen Mary I and King Philip, the rector, Laurence Saunders, was burnt at the stake for preaching Protestant doctrine.

[1] After the church's destruction in the Great Fire, the parish was combined with that of St John the Evangelist Friday Street, also destroyed, but not rebuilt.

[4] In that year, however, the unfinished tower was boarded over and work on it suspended, due to the difficulty Wren was experiencing in paying for the simultaneous completion of several dozen churches, as well as for the ongoing construction of St Paul's Cathedral, from the Coal Tax receipts.

[1] By the beginning of the 19th century there was also a small gallery on the south side, "somewhat like a balcony or an orchestra in an assembly room",[1] over the door to the vestry.

[5] The tower was square in plan, the top storey having three arched openings on each side, each with a finely carved mask keystone.

The novelist Mary Anna Lupton was among those resident in the parish and married there in 1854, but by the late 19th century the number of parishioners had declined due to the move of the population to the suburbs.

The parish of All Hallows Bread Street was combined with that of St Mary-le-Bow in 1876 and the church demolished in 1878, under the Union of Benefices Act 1860.