The church is built on land which was part of the Wallwood Estate, which had been purchased in 1817 by William Cotton,[1] a wealthy banker who would become the Governor of the Bank of England in 1843.

He was also a leading philanthropist; besides supporting educational charities, he founded three new churches in the East End of London and made donations towards more than seventy others.

The congregation set about raising the £2,500 to complete the west end of the building,[5] which when finished was dedicated by Bishop Claughton on Maundy Thursday, 30 March 1893.

[4] By the late 1960s, declining congregations at St Andrew's brought the threat of redundancy and a scheme to make the buildings more viable was put in hand.

[9] The old church hall, which had been purchased by the adjacent Leytonstone School, was burned down in a suspected arson attack in September 2002,[11] and a sympathetic three-storey development of thirteen flats was later constructed in its place.

[3] In June 2007, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, together with Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities, visited St Andrew's in connection with the church's cooperative work with the nearby Shri Nathji Sanatan Hindu Mandir in Whipps Cross Road.

[13] Under the leadership of the current vicar, Fr Paul Kennington, the church has applied for a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for improvements and the repair of subsidence to the vestry.

Following a fund raising campaign in 1913, the organ was fully rebuilt by the prestigious firm of Lewis & Co and the first recital was given on 28 September 1914 by Dr H. W. Richards, although work on it continued into the following year.

[16] The organ was restored in the 1990s and in 2012 when the leather bellows needed repair, the choir and supporters staged a "sponsored hymnathon" to raise funds; this involved singing every hymn in The English Hymnal, which was achieved in 31 hours non-stop.