The church was built between 1716–24 at a cost of £16,940.
The interior was altered by William Butterfield 1875-6 (galleries removed and new seating installed).
The City & South London Railway were given permission to demolish the church in the late 19th century – public outcry forced them to reconsider and they demolished only the crypt, which now forms part of Bank underground station.
The church was featured in T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland’
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
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.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, ‘Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!’