[3] In 1868 the growing population of the parish led to the decision to build a chapel of ease, and land was obtained from the Dean & Chapter in Parkgate Road.

[4] The cornerstone was laid on 6 April 1869 by H.C. Raikes (MP for Chester) with the west end of the building bricked up to facilitate extension when circumstances permitted.

[5] The new chapel, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, was consecrated on 4 April 1872 by William Jacobson, Bishop of Chester.

[7] Services there included holy communion at least once a month on Sundays and on saints' days, as well as morning and evening prayer.

In 1880 the parishioners responded to the suggestion of the Dean and Chapter, first made in 1868, and agreed to surrender their rights in the south transept of the cathedral and make St. Thomas's the parish church.

All that isolated and detached portion of the said parish of Saint Oswald Chester which abuts upon the western side of the said herein before described portion of the parish of Saint Mary on the Hill Chester aforesaid, and which is comprised within the limits of that part of the township of Blacon with Crabwall, wherein Crabwall Hall is situate.

A chapel dedicated to St. Thomas Becket stood by 1200 in the graveyard belonging to St. Werburgh's abbey outside the Northgate, in the fork of the later Parkgate and Liverpool roads.

Serving also as the meeting place for the abbot's manor court of St. Thomas, it became a private house called Green Hall after the Dissolution.

The building probably survived only until the demolition of the northern suburbs during the Civil War siege, though in 1821 it was claimed that the former chapel was still in use as a barn.

An experiment with a choral communion in 1889 did not meet with universal approval, and Sunday services remained unchanged for another twenty years.

More successful was the establishment in 1895 of the mission church of the Good Shepherd on South View Road in the western part of the parish.

In the early 1910s the congregation at the mission church usually numbered 50–80, ten or twenty of whom were communicants, but services were cut back in 1918 and discontinued in 1919.

Sealand Road Infant School was opened in January 1883 in the Mission Church of the Good Shepherd, attached to St. Oswald's parish, in South View, off Tower Wharf.

[16] H. E. Burder (vicar 1909–48) introduced Anglo Catholic services at St. Thomas's, with a daily mass and a sung celebration on Sundays, a tradition which continued under his successors.

St. Thomas' benefits from a number of groups which help support the ministry of the church and provide fellowship among the members.

some of the tracery around the windows and at the top of the nave columns remains incomplete, it is also possible that the walls and ceiling were intended to be plastered.

The Lady Chapel reredos features a Madonna and Child with the inscription "Magnificat anima mea Dominum, et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deum" from the Magnificat The Lady Chapel Altar has three carved panels featuring a pelican feeding her chicks with her own blood, a Lamb holding a Shepherd's staff with the inscription "Ecce Agnus Dei" and another carved panel depicting an Eagle in flight.

Permission was given by a Faculty dated 16 June 1913 to remove the tapestry hangings behind the communion table in the Lady chapel and erect in lieu a reredos of oak with the cost to be defrayed by Helen Catherine Tidswell of Northgate House, the reredos being intended to complete the memorial to her late husband Richard Thomas Tidswell.

[23] The Faculty also provided for a canopy of carved oak for the font as a memorial of the late mother of Jane Wright of 22 Chichester Street.

The Reredos in the Sanctuary, which was installed in 1909, was by the architect Charles Deacon (1844–1927) as a memorial of Rev E C Lowndes, and is carved with the Instruments of the Passion.

The wooden high altar (in the sanctuary) is decorated with three painted panels, featuring: the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Visitation.

to provide bread to 12 poor parishioners on Sundays; no record of payments was found in 1836 but the charity was later revived.

[31] By 1717 £1 a year from Thomas Green's municipal charity was being paid to the churchwardens of St. Oswald's; in 1836 it was distributed among 30 poor widows.

[31] Elizabeth Burkinshaw by will proved 1913 left money to benefit the most deserving poor parishioners, it produced c. £3 a year.

The new workhouse had a large T-shaped main building facing to the east, with a separate infirmary to its west and a school to the south.

Land was donated by the church and a grant of £55 was given by the National Society allowing for the first part of the school to be built.