This region was favoured by King Shaka of the Zulus for military barracks, with his capital becoming KwaDukuza (also called Stanger in more recent history) after the death of his mother.
[2] The first church at Umhlali was a temporary wattle-and-daub building of coarse grass daubed inside with red mud.
Pictures in the Killie Campbell Collection of Africana at UKZN show St James as a plain building with the usual pointed arches over windows and doors.
The roof was made of galvanised iron with the inside lined with tongue and groove match board.
Buttresses had to be placed on the four corners of the church as well as the longest span of walls to provide extra stability.
St James was consecrated by the bishop of Cape Town Robert Gray on 14 June 1864, but its existence was relatively short lived.
Due to the failure of agriculture, the migration of people away from the district at that time, and the crisis with Bishop Colenso.
When St James closed in 1889 the pews were donated to Mr Liege Hulett for the Umhlali Methodist Chapel.
The rinderpest swept into Zululand in 1896 from the north, decimating cattle farming, and in the same year, the region experienced a bad drought, knocking agriculture.
The Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) heralded in the new century and on the back of this, as the British had to maintain long lines of supply and communication, industrialization had come into its own, especially the prefabrication of parts.
St Albans was disassembled and sold to Darnall, further north, to make way for the construction of All Souls in 1921.
A new church was built in Umhlali of brick and plaster and dedicated on 30 May 1921 by Frederick Samuel Baines, Bishop of Natal.
This forth church was renamed All Souls as a memorial to the people of the district who were killed or served during the First World War (1914–1918).