A history of the church is available from the Vicar.

This is more than a history of a church, it's a bit of church history and how the church and "the world" and the town of Warrington meet. From the "distress" (unemployment) suffered in the town as a result of the American Civil War, to the effects of redevelopment, St Ann's has been part of it.

The early 1860s were a time of population growth, when the church sought to provide new places of worship to serve new housing. In what in our day has come to be called "church planting", the parish of St Paul's sent its curate to start a new congregation using a disused chapel on Winwick Street, and the rest of the story follows.

There are snippets from parish magazines and minutes of church meetings. Not much is glossed over, and local newspapers were often more forthcoming about what really went on. While the frankness of the historical record is covered, some of the joy of life in St Ann's has been omitted simply because it was so normal – social activities (tea-parties, the picnics, and the charabanc outings) and the worship of the church. Worship, and the sense of God with us, underlies all this story.

But any story of a "church" must be a story of people - and over the years probably well over a million different people came into St Ann's, to regular worship or for baptisms, weddings and funerals. It is our hope, as the new St Ann's Church opens, to continue a long tradition of offering a welcome to all who want to learn of Jesus Christ.