The first stone church building was erected on the site of St Mary's church, Handsworth, around 1160. It was a small and austere Norman structure, occupying about half of the present south aisle. The lower stages of the sandstone tower at the original church's east end are amongst the few surviving Norman features.The church has undergone successive phases of enlargement, reconstruction and restoration. This engraving shows the church decades after the restoration of 1820, and several years before its further restoration in the 1870s.