| St Margaret's Church was founded in 1919 but the present church building dates from 1930. The construction of the Fenchurch Street line railway encouraged the development of Leigh, which expanded from a small fishing village to a large residential suburb of London. St Margaret's, originally a mission daughter church of Leigh's historic parish church St Clement's, was built to be within walking distance of the new housing.
Canon Robert Stuart King, Rector of St Clement's founded a temporary mission church in the north-west corner of St Clement's parish in 1919. In 1925, with the foundation of the Conventional District of St Margaret the church became independent of St Clement's and in 1929 St Margaret's was given parochial status. The first priest-in-charge was Father Francis Hilditch.
The rapidly expanding population of Leigh soon outgrew the mission church and plans were made to erect a more permanent building. The foundation stone for the present church building was laid on 26th July 1930 by Henry Wilson, the Bishop of Chelmsford, and most of the church was built within 40 weeks at the cost of £8,500. The north aisle and Blessed Sacrament (Ascension) chapel was added later in 1938. The mission church became the church hall and survived for a further 34 years.
St Margaret's continues to bring the good news of the Christian gospel to all sections of the community within the parish. In many senses, given the social and cultural changes that have affected society in the past few decades, it finds itself once again a mission church, as it was at the very beginning, in 1919.
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