St.Stephen's church is a grade II* listed building, it was built between 1840 and 1845 by the well known Bath architect James Wilson at a time when the parish of Walcot served most of the northern slopes of Bath. The number of residents in the parish was growing as a result of housing development in the area so new churches were required and St Stephen's was built to serve the residents of Lansdown.

Wilson's early work includes St.Stephen's Church and St.Stephen's Villas c1845 (previously St.Swithen's Almshouses, set just below St.Stephen's Church, the original design was for an impressive terrace of 16 Early Tudor style houses which was reduced to only 6).

The design of St.Stephen's decorative and distinctive tower was inspired and influenced by magnificent cathedrals in europe. It was constructed in three stages, it has a square base, an octagonal tower and is topped by impressive freestanding corner pinacles that are attached by traceried flying buttresses.

Wilson went on to design many buildings around Bath, he was very comfortable with Tudor designs, and as it was established practise to use Tudor or Jacobethan styles for schools and collegiate buildings (the formal structure being well suited to the task of the building), his designs for Kingswood College c1851 would have been quite unsurprising.

More unusual however is his enormous asymmetric Secular Gothic design for Bath Royal High School c1858 (formerly Lansdown Proprietary College). It is interesting how dramatically his style had changed in the years between designing these two buildings.

Around the outer slopes of the city, particularly on Lansdown between St.Stephen's and Kingswood College are numerous Victorian Gothic Villas, several are known to have been designed by Wilson, and it is extremely likely that many more are attributable to him.

In 1866 William Willcox joined his firm and as a pair they continued to design many buildings in the city, including 4 English/French Gothic churches that are typical examples of the style popular in the latter half of the century.

View the beautiful interior of the church on this 360 degree panorama.