St. Mary's church is located on Portsea Island and was built on the island's highest point. It was not the first church to be built on this site in actual fact it was the third. Records of earlier churches on this site date back to 1170, around the time the first church was believed to have been built. At that time the parish of St. Mary's extended to where modern day Stubbington Avenue is. The parish …showed first 75 words of 1112 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1112 total…Source 9 shows extracts from a letter by Edgar Jacob to the people in his parish written in 1889. This seems to show how pleased he was that his dream, a church for the working class, had become a reality. In the end both Canon Edgar Jacob's and Arthur Blomfield's determination meant that they achieved their target and this is shown today by the churches many visitors who believe the church was built in The Middle Ages.