Initially, many of the Eastern European Catholics worshipped in industrial hostels, as these were common locations where immigrants found cheaper accommodation.

The eparchy was erected on 10 June 1957 as an apostolic exarchate for the faithful of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in England and Wales.

[6] The Ukrainian Catholic church in Wolverhampton was included as part of a video series by English Heritage on faith buildings in England.

[7] On 9 June 2023, the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family in London, according to the decree of Bishop Kenneth, switches [uk] from 1 September 2023 to the Gregorian calendar, in particular with Easter.

Its stated aim is 'the advancement of religion at discretion of the bishop and his successors in title or the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Great Britain'.

[13] Since most of the faithful in the Apostolic Exarchate were patriotic and nationalist veterans of the Ukrainian Army, which was created in resistance to the German occupational forces, most supported the idea of a Patriarchate.

A few Ukrainian Catholic priests came from Rome and began to celebrate Divine Liturgy privately in the faithful's homes commemorating the Major Archbishop as Patriarch – an act which angered Bishop Hornyak.

For example, on 18 December 1977, when Bishop Hornyak went to Gloucester to open the new Ukrainian Catholic church, he was met by around 500 demonstrators who ignored the police cordon line and attacked him, bruising his face and crushing his glasses.

[14][15] Stephen Sulyk, Archbishop Metropolitan Emeritus for Ukrainian Catholics in Philadelphia, wrote in his autobiography, I Am With You Always, that Bishop Hornyak was eventually forced into retirement due to pressure from the Patriarchal Organization – which advocated a Kyiv Patriarchate – and the Major Archbishop of Lviv, Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky (Sulyk's predecessor) unfairly due to his backing of Vatican policies.

The edifice was the third home of an independent church founded in the 17th century, the King's Weigh House congregationalists, which dissolved after terminal decline in 1966.