The church, on St Paul's Square and near the Town Hall, opened in 1874 and was designed by the architects James M. Teale and Edmund Beckett Denison (later created Lord Grimthorpe).

[1] The shape is cruciform with an aisled three-bay chancel, quatrefoil in cross section and five-bay nave, as well as north and south transepts, and a square central tower.

[1] The column capitals and label stops throughout the church were designed by a S. Tinkler of Derby and show naturalistic foliage, fruit, and animals with those in the nave representing the twelve months of the year.

There are six windows (one in the south aisle and five in the narthex) designed in an Arts and Crafts style by Archibald John Davies of the Bromsgrove Guild.

[1] Between 1889 and 1901 the eastern arm and south transept were considerably altered to the design of George Frederick Bodley, at the expense of Michael Bass, 1st Baron Burton.

The reredos was replaced by one designed by ecclesiastical and architectural sculptor Robert Bridgeman that depicted the Crucifixion in a central panel of red shawk stone surrounded by the saints.

The two west bays of the nave and the narthex were converted into a church hall in 1979 and at the same time several items were added from the former chapel of ease of St Margaret, including a wooden lectern by Morris and Co., a painting of the Crucifixion by Charles Edgar Buckeridge[4] which was placed by the south door, statues of Alpha and Omega which were added to the south chancel aisle chapel, a banner of the Queen of Heaven probably by the Comper school, and statues of St Margaret of Antioch and St Michael slaying the Dragon.

[8] The Hill organ was moved to Trinity Methodist Church, in George Street in 1896, and then in 2012 to Sankt-Afra-Kirche in the Berlin suburb of Gesundbrunnen.