Urban historian Harold L. Platt notes that in the Victorian period "The importance of membership in this Unitarian congregation cannot be overstated: as the fountainhead of Manchester Liberalism it exerted tremendous influence on the city and the nation for a generation.

According to The Harvard University Hymn Book, Winkworth "did more than any other single individual to make the rich heritage of German hymnody available to the English-speaking world.

[5] Among the best-known chorales translated by Winkworth are "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come" ("Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her", Martin Luther, 1534); "Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying" ("Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", Philipp Nicolai, 1599); "How Brightly Beams the Morning Star!"

("Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern", Nicolai, 1597);[6] and the Christmas hymn "A Spotless Rose" ("Es ist ein Ros entsprungen", anon, 1599).

[7][8] She translated Gerhardt's "Die güldne Sonne voll Freud und Wonne" into "The golden sunbeams with their joyous gleams".

[14] The rumour's persistence over the decades led to investigations in Calcutta archives, as well as comments by William Lee-Warner in 1917 and Lord Zetland, Secretary of State for India, in 1936.

[15] Catherine Winkworth died suddenly of heart disease near Geneva on 1 July 1878 and was buried in Monnetier, in Upper Savoy.