The Anglican Church of St Mary the Virgin is on Darlington Street in the Bathwick area of Bath, Somerset, England, near Pinch's Sydney Place (1808) and Bath's famed Sydney Pleasure Gardens. The church was constructed by the Pulteney family, who used it to replace the medieval parish church of St Mary's, Bathwick, known even in Georgian times as Bathwick Old Church. The churchyard is now part of Smallcombe Cemetery.
The band Muse recorded the organ parts on their second studio album Origin of Symmetry at the Church of St Mary the Virgin.
William Pulteney commissioned a bridge across the Avon when he inherited land across the river in what was then rural countryside. When the bridge was completed in 1774, it encouraged new settlement into the Bathwick Estate and the population increased here. The needs of a congregation called for a new church and a committee was formed in 1810. William Vane, Earl of Darlington, as a patron, provided a site at the lower end of Bathwick hill for the construction of a new church with John Pinch in charge of the design. In September 1814, the ceremony for the erection of the foundation stone was made. This occurred during a lull in the Napoleonic War, and so the inscription stone read:
After this, the nearby Bathwick Old Church was demolished in 1818. On 4 February 1820, St Mary the Virgin was officially consecrated as the place of divine worship for the parish of Bathwick.
The organ in St. Mary's is the only example in the city of the work of Father Henry Willis. The musical tradition of the church dates back to the late 1800s when the Oxford Movement's influence caused the establishment of a robed choir. For many years the reputation of the church choir rode high but during the 1970s and 1980s it proved difficult to maintain the numbers of boy trebles, prompting the formation of an all-adult choir. In the 1990s and into the new millennium the standards once again rose, and the choir of St. Mary's came to be held in high regard, making several recital tours within the UK and abroad, and broadcasting on radio and television.