Ambrose Barlow carried out priestly duties in the parish while living at Morleys Hall in Astley.

[5] Among the priests to serve the parish was the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who arrived in 1879.

The church was designed in the Gothic Revival style by Joseph Hansom and built in 1855 in hammer-dressed stone with a slate roof with fishscale bands.

[1] The north and south elevations have nine bays on a projecting plinth separated by buttresses and three-light windows with Geometrical tracery.

The three-stage tower has angled buttresses with an octagonal stair turret in one corner.