It is believed that the name "Woolnoth" refers to a benefactor, possibly one Wulnoth de Walebrok who is known to have lived in the area earlier in the 12th century, or perhaps Wulfnoth Cild, a South Saxon nobleman and grandfather of King Harold Godwinson.

The parish registers include records of the baptism of two men of African origin in the early 17th-century, Andrew Blackmore in 1629, and Timothy, described as a "heathen blackamoore" in 1629.

Its unusually imposing façade, in English Baroque style, is dominated by two flat-topped turrets supported by columns of the Corinthian order, which are used throughout the church.

The west side of the façade, facing Lombard Street, has distinctive recesses bearing an inset forward-curving pediment resting on skewed columns.

Its galleries were removed by William Butterfield in 1876,[10] who thought they were unsafe, and a number of other significant (and not entirely successful) changes were made at the same time.

Between 1897 and 1900 the City & South London Railway (C&SLR) built Bank Underground station beneath the church.

The C&SLR were given permission to demolish it, but public outcry forced them to reconsider: the company undertook to use only the subsoil instead.

No cracks formed in the plasterwork, and no settlement of the structure occurred; the company later claimed that the edifice of the church was considerably stronger than before.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

In his notes to the poem Eliot remarks that the "dead sound on the final stroke of nine" was "A phenomenon which I have often noticed.