When Ebenezer Howard set up his first garden city in Letchworth in 1903 the Church of England gave little thought as to the spiritual needs of the citizens of the new town by building a central Anglican place of worship.

Swatman called a meeting at the end of the war in November 1918 to discuss building a permanent church which was attended by 28 people who donated £29 5s.

The architect Arthur Heron Ryan Tenison (1861-1930) was commissioned[3] to produce a design described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "an ambitious project... A conventional Decorated Gothic style was adopted with flint walls and stone dressings with conventional gothic traceried windows."

[6] The baptismal font was found in pieces in a builder's yard in 1934 having been removed from St Albans Abbey, where it had been installed in 1853.

The font was obtained for the price of transporting it to St Paul's where it was installed and dedicated to the memory of the late Mrs Evelyn Swatman.

[7] By 1938 the church needed to be extended again, and an appeal was launched to raise the required £1,000; this sum was reached by 1940 and the north aisle was finished, a vestibule built and the roofing of the nave completed.

At the end of 2023 they donated their chairs to another church and put in new wooden hairs making the place look newer.