[8] According to Galloway and Rawll, the chapel looked like an 18th century meeting house of English Dissenters and did not possess architectural significance.
In 1827 the English banker and politician Henry Drummond purchased the site and the building, hoping to promote Irvingism within the Church of England.
[16] Among its ideas, the Tracts emphasised apostolic succession and the episcopacy,[17] defended the practice of liturgy,[17] and underscored the importance of the eucharist, advocating for its more frequent celebration.
[20] In 1845, Oakeley wrote a letter to Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, asserting his right to uphold all Roman doctrine.
Facing opposition from the bishop, Oakeley gave up his minister license on 3 June[25] and joined the Roman Catholic Church on 29 October that year.
[28] Upton Richards purchased the sites of the chapel and adjoining houses in 1849 in order to build a new church, and the Ecclesiastical District of All Saints' was soon founded on 30 July 1849.
[29][c] The Cambridge Camden Society took charge of the rebuilding and appointed Sir Stephen Glynne and Beresford Hope overseeing the work.
[28] Margaret Street Chapel saw its last sermon preached by Charles Marriott on 7 April 1850 and held its final service the next day.
[30] The total cost of the church, including the site and endowments, was around £70,000; several large individual donations helped to fund it.
[32] The Oxford Movement also led to the creation of religious orders for women in England,[33] including one at Margaret Street Chapel.
[36] On 5 May 1856 Upton Richards received the professions of religious sisterhood of Byron and two other women, and in August they founded the Society of All Saints (Sisters of the Poor).
[39][40] The scholar Elizabeth Ludlow argued that Rossetti's poem "Yet a Little While" contains phrases that describe the interior of All Saints, Margaret Street.
[44] To commemorate Upton Richards, the parish devoted the decoration of the north wall of the church, which was designed by Butterfield, painted by Alexander Gibbs, and made by Henry Poole & Sons in 1875–1876.
[43] Compton's tenure lasted until July 1886, during which Archbishop of Canterbury Edward White Benson preached at the church on Ascension Day, 3 June 1886.
[46] He created a newspaper for the parish in 1887,[47] established a mission in Pentonville in northern London from 1888 to 1897,[48] and offered Welsh services at All Saints from 1889 to 1895.
[50] During the Victorian era, Princess Alexandra of Denmark frequented the church until the death of her son Prince Albert Victor in 1892.
[58] During the bombing of London in the Second World War, the choiristers were sent to the countryside and the roof of the parish school was set on fire.
[59] Dom Bernard died in 1942,[60] and Geoffrey Fisher, then the Bishop of London, appointed Cyril Edric Tomkinson as the new vicar in 1943, who resigned due to ill health in 1951[61] and was succeeded by Kenneth Needham Ross.
[66] In 1970, Bishop Graham Leonard of London thought of using All Saints as a centre to catechise lay people, which inspired Marshall to establish the Institute of Christian Studies at 84 Margaret street, where the choir school once occupied.
For the first three years the institute was a resident community, before it transitioned into a place of teaching and was formally opened by Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1973.
[69] David Hope, then principal of St Stephen's House, Oxford, an Anglo-Catholic theological college, was appointed the vicar of All Saints in 1982.
[80] The design of the church showed Butterfield (in Sir John Betjeman's words) "going on from where the Middle Ages left off" as a neo-Gothic architect.
[82] The Victorian critic John Ruskin wrote after seeing All Saints: "Having done this, we may do anything; ... and I believe it to be possible for us, not only to equal, but far to surpass, in some respects, any Gothic yet seen in Northern countries.
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described the interior as "dazzling, though in an eminently High Victorian ostentatiousness or obtrusiveness.
The north wall is dominated by a large ceramic tile frieze designed by Butterfield, painted by Alexander Gibbs, and fired by Henry Poole and Sons, installed in 1873.
[97] The organist-composer Healey Willan, a student of Hoyte, often played for Evensong at the church when he was in London at the beginning of the 20th century.