The church was regularly attended by author Jane Austen while she lived in Southampton and painter Sir John Everett Millais was baptised there.

Henry II, king of England from 1154 to 1189, granted land for the construction of All Hallows' Church to the monks of St. Denys Priory during his reign.

[4] The church had five bells, but three of them were stolen one night in September 1682[1] and never found, despite an award being offered by the Mayor of Southampton, John Speed, in the London Gazette.

[6] Work begun on the replacement church, All Saints, in the spring of 1792, with the foundation stone being laid on 3 August that year.

[14] Kingsbury's letter sparked a response from Brian Monckhouse of Oxford,[15][16] which in turn led to much further debate and publications on the matter including a "pastoral charge" by the Bishop of Salisbury.

3. c. i), was passed in 1797, after the new building had been constructed and furnished, allowing the trustees to raise up to £4,000 more and increasing the percentage they could collect from properties in the parish to one shilling and sixpence in the pound.

[5] In the early 19th century, novelist Jane Austen lived in the parish and regularly attended the church, mentioning it occasionally in her correspondence.

[19] In 1914 the graveyard was formally deconsecrated and the headstones were removed from the site, which became a children's playground in the 1930s and subsequently a multi-storey car park.

In August 1944, the human remains housed in the catacombs were transferred to Hollybrook Cemetery in Southampton where they were reburied in a single communal grave.

[2] The ruins of the church building were subsequently demolished – sources do not indicate exactly when – and replaced by shops and a multi-storey car park.

[2] The parish registers were successfully retrieved from the ruin and, despite being charred and damaged by candle wax and molten tar (the results of a fire that followed the bombing), they have been restored.

[2] Despite the debts related to the costs for the construction of the building having been settled in the early-mid 19th century, and the church ceasing to exist 100 years later, the three acts of Parliament allowing trustees of the church to levy rates on properties in the parish for the purpose of settling those debts remained in force and untouched until the Law Commission proposed their repeal in July 2014, with a view to presenting recommendations to Parliament in 2015.

Pineapples were a feature of several buildings in Southampton as a symbol of welcome, an idea that originated in the Caribbean and which possibly reached the city as a result of the slave trade in the 16th century.

[2][19] In his book A Walk Through Southampton, Sir Henry Englefield lamented the positioning of the pews, pulpit and reading desk:[22] On entering this church, the bold and graceful curvature of the roof claims high admiration.

The pulpit and reading-desk are placed in the centre of the church, so as completely to hide the altar from almost every part of it; and the officiating minister turns his back directly to it during the whole of the service.

In the church which we are now considering, the reading desk and pulpit might have been placed, with peculiarly good effect, on each side of the recess for the altar; and as the sounding board is omitted, a very elegant form might have been given to them, with no great deviation from the usual shape.

[2] Rear-Admiral Philip De Carteret, a renowned Royal Navy officer and explorer who participated in two circumnavigation expeditions in 1764–66 and 1766–69, was also buried in the catacombs.