The church's early history was defined in part by its missionary activities and, due to the shared language, England was one of the earliest places to be proselytised.

Kimball and Hyde both spoke at the meeting and the missionaries would return to Vauxhall Chapel to speak further at that afternoon's service and on the following Wednesday.

[15][4] By the time this conference was held, there were several branches, or small congregations, established in Alston, Bedford, Whittle, Daubers, Hunter's Hill, Chatburn, and Penwortham, among other places.

[16] On 8 April 1838, a second conference was held at which Joseph Fielding became president of the British Mission, with Richards and William Clayton as counselors.

Among the church's first apostles to arrive was Wilford Woodruff who, in March 1840, was introduced to leaders of the United Brethren and began preaching to their congregation.

30 days later, Woodruff had baptised 45 preachers and 160 members of the United Brethren, who put into his hands their Gadfield Elm Chapel and 45 houses licensed for preaching.

[25]: 19 In 1841, richly-bound copies of the Book of Mormon were presented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert by Lorenzo Snow, who received an audience with Her Majesty.

[30] Writing of the members preparing for one such ocean voyage, Charles Dickens described these pioneer Latter-day Saints in chapter 22 of his book The Uncommercial Traveller as, by his estimation, "the pick and flower of England".

[34] Beginning in 1891, Latter-day Saint leaders in America increasingly began to encourage the European members to remain in their homelands and build up the church in those countries.

[28] The Pearl of Great Price, now part of the Standard Works of the LDS Church, was first compiled in Liverpool in 1851 by Franklin D.

They lectured and published pamphlets accusing the missionary programme of being a disguise for Americans to enslave British girls as polygamous wives.

[43] When the First World War began in 1914, all American LDS Church missionaries in the United Kingdom were evacuated back to the US.

[45][46] The movie Trapped by the Mormons, inspired by Winifred Graham's book of the same title, led to widespread anti-Mormon rhetoric throughout the British Isles.

Although Graham and other anti-Mormons continued to denounce the church, the government told them that there was no evidence that missionaries were acting in a way to justify deportation.

Prior to the administration of church president David O. McKay, most British congregations met in rented rooms and buildings.

This was considered a detriment to the LDS Church's proselytizing and in the early 1960s, a large number of chapels were constructed around the British Isles.

[52] Based on studies of information submitted to the Genealogical Society, it was estimated in 1971 that 80 percent of the members of the church in the world were of British extraction.

[4] In the early 1970s, the Mormon sex in chains case brought the church some unwanted publicity in national newspapers.

A young missionary, Kirk Anderson, went missing in 1977, in Ewell, Surrey, after he was abducted from the steps of a church meetinghouse.

In 2012, the LDS Church's Hyde Park Chapel in London was reopened following extensive remodeling for worship services and as a visitors' center, featuring a replica statue of Thorvaldsen's Christus which can be seen from the roadside.

[66] The LDS Church reacted by putting advertisements on the London Underground and buses, many of them pointing to a website associated with the "I'm a Mormon" campaign.

[70][71] In 2016, Baroness Emma Nicholson invited Jeffrey R. Holland to speak at a conference at Windsor Castle addressing religious persecution and its role in forced migration.

[73] Keynote speakers included Dan Snow, British historian and TV presenter, Paralympic gold medallist Kadeena Cox and entertainer Donny Osmond.