[1] The members of the Bussell family who settled in the district were headed by five brothers: John, Charles, Lenox, Vernon, and Alfred.

Their father, William Marchant Bussell, who had died in 1820, had been curate at St Mary's Church in Portsea, England.

[2] The principal townsite of the Vasse district was established on the shores of Geographe Bay, and by 1835 had been officially named Busselton.

[1][4] Initial financing for a church construction project was provided almost exclusively by friends and relatives of the Bussell family in England, and especially cousins Elizabeth Capel Carter and Frances Bowker.

[2] Ultimately, the fund raised a total of £280, twenty of which were donated by Queen Adelaide, consort of King William IV, via her godmother, Lady Elizabeth Capel, who was also one of the Court's ladies-in-waiting.

Bussell and John Wollaston are thought to have designed the building, to a modified early Norman architectural style, based on that of the chapel at Winchester College.

All of the frames on which the arches were built were made by John Bussell, using timber he had donated after pit-sawing it himself, with the assistance of a sawyer named Balschin.

[1][4] In February 1846, The Illustrated London News published an article about the church, which it described as follows:[6] "... a plain but substantial stone edifice, with circular headed windows and doorways; between the former and at the cornices are buttresses reaching to the line of springing.

"Later that year, Wollaston wrote that "appropriate seats of a uniform pattern" had been made of jarrah wood, and that a stone font had been finished and would soon be installed at the west end of the nave, near the door.

He had asked "friends at home" [ie in England] to "expend in [glazed] windows"; in the meantime, calico was being used in place of glass.

[7][8] A similar claim is made about St John's Anglican Church, Albany, which was built between 1841[9] and 1844,[10] and then consecrated, also by Short, on 25 October 1848.

[1] A brass honour roll commemorating members of the church who had died during World War I was dedicated on 6 December 1920.

[1] During the 1970s, the bell tower was renovated, and many of the original windows were replaced with new stained glass items donated by descendants of early settler families.

Additionally, the church's interior walls were refinished at around the turn of the century in gyprock and plaster, to approximately window height.

The adjacent rectory and former church hall sites were added to the State Register as child places on 13 August 2014.

[1] The porch has an arched entrance on its eastern side, and is fitted with four small stained glass windows depicting the dioceses to which the church has belonged: Canterbury, Calcutta, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Bunbury.

[1] The church grounds are grassed, apart from some small areas of concrete or brick paving,[4] and are also shaded by numerous informally spaced mature peppermint trees.

[1][4] To the south and west of the church is a small graveyard with about thirty irregularly spaced visible graves dating from around 1840.

Built in 1914, the former hall, which was made of timber and iron, was re-located in the 1990s to Lot 26 Layman Road Lockville at Wonnerup.

It has since been replaced by a new St Mary's Family Centre,[1][15][16] which is used for various purposes, including meetings, wedding receptions, large church services and Sunday School.

[16] A substantial building in the Federation Italianate style, the rectory is located at 43 Peel Terrace, immediately to the east of the church.