St Michael's church was consecrated in 1815 as a chapel of ease to St Mary Walton. It was designed by John Cragg, owner of the Mersey Iron Foundry in Liverpool and Thomas Rickman, a self taught architect. The church was built entirely at Cragg's own expense for the sum of £7,865 which equates to well over half a million pounds in today's money.
Along with the other three churches built around this time by Cragg, St Michael's was constructed on a cast iron frame, and its door and window frames and tracery were made of the same material, but only in St Michael's is the use of cast iron for external ornamentation so readily visible. The north and south elevations and the top of the tower are fringed by cast iron parapets and more than twenty cast iron pinnacles.
Equally important in the church's construction is the use of Welsh slate: it is thought that the building was originally clad with slate, and the nave roof is made of a double skin of large slate panels each measuring approximately 2x0.75 metres. The roof is of such a shallow pitch that its novel method of construction cannot be seen from ground level.
Internally, the stained glass windows are very impressive, particularly the large east window which was erected as a memorial to one of the parish's early incumbents, the Reverend William Hesketh; the topmost rose section of this feature is a representation of the Holy Trinity.
The clock in the tower is part of a memorial to those who fell in the Great War of 1914-18, the rest of which can be found in the narthex. This consists of two marble panels carrying the names of the fallen and flanking a window which depicting St Michael.