[1] The organist Thomas Worsley Staniforth composed the hymn tune Jerusalem my happy home to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone.

Work was begun in 1856 by the Revd Charles Lowder MA and a group of priests, all were members of the Society of the Holy Cross.

The Society had been founded a year earlier with the express purpose of banding priests to a common rule of life and prayer in mission service.

Lowder organised Sisters of Mercy and others to care for the sick and raised funds for a tented hospital.

[3] After Lowder's death in 1880, Maurice Bingham Adams was engaged to design extensions in his memory.