The building incorporates work by some of the finest Gothic Revival architects and artists, including Street, George Frederick Bodley, Ninian Comper, Arthur Blomfield and Edward Burne-Jones, with stained-glass windows and frescoes by Clayton and Bell.

St Peter's was built over a period of twenty-four years from 1855 at the instigation of the first vicar of Bournemouth, the Reverend Alexander Morden Bennett, to replace an earlier building.

In 1914, an extension was added to the north-east corner of the church, providing a vestry, office, and song school, and a basement lounge area with kitchen, toilets, and boiler room.

During the summer of 2020, churchwarden Jane Styslinger set up the Grounds Reimagined project, to clear the near 4-acre woodland churchyard that had been neglected since 2009.

Since November 2024, the priest-in-charge of Bournemouth Town Centre Parish has been the Reverend Canon Nicholas Jepson-Biddle, formerly Precentor of Wells Cathedral.St Peter's has always maintained a choral tradition as a key part of its ministry.

The boys and girl choristers usually sing as separate sections on an equal basis but combine for notable occasions such as Christmas and Easter.

The choir rehearses in the song school, a purpose-built barrel-roofed space with piano, stalls, music and robing storage, and office.

As Street's work began to replace the old building from 1855, this instrument was moved about, first from its west gallery to the new north aisle in 1856, then into the north-east transept soon after 1864 when the east end was completed.

Funds were sought to provide a case and pipe decoration, but Alexander Morden Bennett desired an instrument more worthy of the church and attention quickly turned to the idea of a new organ.

Morden Bennett's choice may also have been influenced by the largely-new organ by Willis in nearby Christchurch Priory which was of a similar size to the new St Peter's instrument and completed in 1865.

The organ occupied a chamber on the east side of the north transept, next to the sanctuary, and the front pipes were decorated with coloured diaper work in 1873 in keeping with its location.

The organ was built in a new chamber created in the space formerly occupied by the vestries on the east side of the north-east transept.

[14] Arthur Harrison is said to have taken 'infinite pains with it, and had special difficulties to contend with owing to the distance of the instrument from the main body of the church'.

The organ was overhauled by the Liverpool firm of Rushworth and Dreaper in 1976, increasing the size to 54 stops and adding a detached console on a moveable platform at the front of the nave.

When the tower was completed in 1870, it was intended to be equipped with a peal of bells, and a bell-chamber, ringing chamber, and circular stairway were provided.

When Morden Bennett, the founding priest, succumbed to a serious illness, members of the church and town organised an appeal to raise funds for an additional six bells, augmenting the existing two, to honour him.