The Reverend Francis Russell Nixon was appointed first Bishop of Tasmania and Frederick Holdship Cox the first Dean of St David's.

[1] The foundation stone of a new cathedral was laid in January 1868 by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, a son of Queen Victoria, and it was built between then and 1936,[2] in the Gothic Revival style, to a design by the English architect George Frederick Bodley.

The cathedral's distinctive features include an arcaded entrance with a large west window[3] and buttressed turrets; a square tower made of Oatlands stone; and a close on the southern side with old trees.

The cathedral tower has a peal of 10 bells, with the tenor of 21 long cwt (2,400 lb or 1,100 kg), set for full circle ringing.

[5][6] The mission of St David's is "Proclaiming Jesus as Lord in the Heart of Hobart to build a community of living faith, profound hope and practical love.

Linked with England's Coventry Cathedral, the dean and associate clergy are "committed to creative liturgies that lift the heart and proclaim the Biblical faith as our society, increasingly dissatisfied with a purely materialistic world view, seeks a sense of the transcendent and apprehension of a living spirituality.