Great changes were afoot, both in Datchet and in the rest of the country, around the middle of the last century; changes which determined the shape and look of our village perhaps more than any other period has done before or since. During the 1830s and 40s the old watercourse running through the village centre had been culverted underground by the Barker Bridge House Trust, thus creating the dry land which has become the Greens. Then in 1848 the South Western Railway Company built its branch line from Richmond to Windsor, carving straight across the High Street and Queen’s Road. As part of the reorganisation caused by the railway, the new Victoria and Albert bridges were built, together with a completely new road to Windsor through the Home Park. In 1851 the old river bridge at the foot of the High Street, where a ferry had operated for hundreds of years, was finally removed. In response to national awareness of the ignorant state of the poor, the Rev. Isaac Gossett had campaigned and raised funds to build a church school to serve the village, which had opened in 1843.

Improvement and modernisation were in the air everywhere, and in 1853 a new vicar arrived in the parish ready to take up the challenge presented by a crumbling and inadequate church building. The Rev.Henry Udney Hall was not alone in his ‘fervent desire’ to rebuild at Datchet; the mid-1850s were peak years for the founding of new churches and the rebuilding of neglected ones. In 1851, national concern about the religious condition of the masses had led to a ‘religious census’ being taken at the same time as the ten-yearly population count. The low national figures for those attending churches on a Sunday came as a shock to the authorities, while in Datchet only 240 were present at a service out of the total population of 898. The official view was that there should be room for 58% of the population to be seated in church, in the hope that a new style of worship would kindle interest and encourage people to return.

So Datchet’s 367 pew places needed to be increased to 530, which could not be achieved in the old building, largely dating from the 14^th century. The churchyard also needed to expand as it was nearly full and was restricted on the north by the old vicarage which was quite close to the church itself. The Duke of Buccleuch, the Lord of the Manor, offered a completely new site along the Slough Road, but it was rejected and he gave £150 donation to the building fund instead, as did Queen Victoria herself. The total cost was estimated at over £3000, a sum which could not all be raised in advance, so work began on the most necessary phase.

In May 1857 the church was closed and services were held in the village school until December, by which time the chancel had been restored and a new nave and south aisle had been built, including the south porch. The architect was Raphael Brandon, who designed it in plain Early English Gothic; this had the advantage of being cheaper as well as ‘more suitable’ than a richly decorated style. By 1859, work was under way again as money allowed, demolishing the original vicarage and rebuilding further north (now our ‘old vicarage’). William Dove, the contractor for the church, also built this grand vicarage, largely paid for by the Rev. Hall who was a wealthy man. There was then room to remove the north aisle and rebuild it, with a new tower futher east than the original one had been and completed in 1864. This may not have been the original plan - unfortunately no drawings have survived - but a matter of expediency due to the piecemeal approach. Certainly, the tower was something of a disaster, since the bells could not be safely swung in it and a striking mechanism was made instead by Hammerson the blacksmith.

At this point in 1864, building could probably have stopped, but it was recorded that the accommodation was still ‘seriously deficient, especially for the families of working men’. It is hard to believe that the newly intended 650 pew spaces were really needed, especially since the village population had risen by only 84 in ten years. Was the revived church and its new services really attracting such large numbers, or were there perhaps social class factors at work? In the old church, the poor were almost certainly relegated to the far end of the nave and to a gallery over the south aisle, which was demolished during rebuilding. Were the families of the working men now rather too near both the view and the delicate noses of the more genteel?

Whatever the reason, by 1869 the church had aquired its strange ‘north north aisle’, as well as an extension of the nave and north aisle to the west, encroaching on land which had belonged to the Barker Bridge trust as owners of The Royal Stag. Building finally stopped after more than a decade, having produced a church with a very odd plan but in a style of simple elegance and with very good timber roofs – the architect being an expert in medieval roof design. The large new windows were rapidly filled with pictorial and decorative stained glass, several dedicated by the parish to Prince Albert who had died in 1861. Wealthy families also took the new opportunity to install glass memorials to their dead instead of wall plaques, so that the church soon came to possess an unusually rich scheme of stained glass, much of it by the well known London firm of O’Connor.

William Corden, who lived at 8 High Street and was one of the family of painters to the Queen, recorded the church as it was just before work began, and again after completion. Both views are taken from the same spot in London Road, looking towards the east end of the original chancel. This is the only part of the church which still survives from medieval times, although it was completely renovated during the Victorian rebuilding.