It is located at the start of the main driveway to St Giles House, the seat of the Earl of Shaftesbury, at the end of a row of Stuart-era almshouses.

This medieval parish church was rebuilt in the 1620s under patronage from Sir Anthony Ashley, 1st Baronet of Wimborne St Giles.

The 1732 rebuild, in the Early Georgian style, consisted of a tower with nave and south porch, constructed mostly from Greensand ashlar and flint.

The fire spread quickly and by the time it was extinguished, only the walls remained standing; the church a smoking ruin.

[2][3][5][6][8][9] The 9th Earl of Shaftesbury engaged Sir Ninian Comper, a pupil of Bodley, to restore and rebuild the church.

Comper rebuilt the church from 1908 to 1910, utilising the surviving 18th century walls and thus keeping its external appearance similar to before the fire.

[6] The church has an unusual square plan, mostly due to the short and wide aisles, with west tower, south porch, chancel and north vestry.

The church vestry, trapezoid-like in shape, abuts the southern end of the almshouses and the northern face of the tower.

[nb 1][1][8] The exterior of the church mostly retains its classical Georgian appearance despite numerous restorations, featuring round-headed windows, a balustraded parapet to the tower, and Tuscan columns framing the doorways.

The north nave aisle, entirely a creation of Comper, cannot easily be seen from the exterior due to its location by the private almshouses.

It has four massive Gothic style windows with idiosyncratic tracery but due to its location, does not detract from the otherwise uniform Georgian exterior.

[8] The interior, in a contrast to the relatively plain and classical lines of the exterior, is rich Gothic Revival and is nearly entirely the work of Comper from 1908 to 1910.

Though the Georgian-style windows in the nave and chancel are preserved, the rest of the interior resembles a Gothic church far more than a Georgian one.

The columns of the arcade are round, featuring moulded bases and the caps bearing shields supporting chamfered pointed arches.

The arcade makes the south nave aisle extremely narrow, featuring a simple brace-beamed lean-to roof.

The nave and chancel roof is of the braced tie-beam design, with trusses springing from carved angels and a plasterwork ceiling.

It was designed by Comper and features figures of the Crucifixion and apostles; it is ten bays in length and stretches the entire width of the interior.

Comper also added a long western gallery during his restoration, giving access to the organ and bell ringing chamber.

These monuments are a small fraction of what the church previously contained, many were destroyed by the fire of 1908 and the rest were severely damaged.

[9] As the restoration of the tower neared completion in 1909, Comper was concerned with the ability of the fire-weakened walls to support a ring of bells again.

The newly recast bell, which reused the fittings from 1910, was inspected by the then Prime Minister David Cameron at Taylor's foundry in Loughborough during his tour of the works, before being rehung at the church.