This church was built between 1100 and 1140 a.d. as an outreach parish church of the Priory in Prittlewell, Essex. The parish was previously served from St. Mary's at Prittlewell, the Priory Church, and is listed in the Little Domesday Book of 1086.
Prittlewell Priory was itself an outreach of the monastic order at Cluny, in France.
In all probability the monks would have sent a member of the priory to Shoebury on a regular basis to hold services.

The first incumbent on record was a Peter de Pasinge who held the position of Rector in 1267.

The architecture of St. Andrew's Church is predominantly Norman with the classic round arches and dog-tooth decorations of that period. It is one of the finest examples of Norman architecture remaining in the region.

The rear of the nave and the base of the tower are Perpendicular leading one to believe that the tower itself is of that period too, although no certain provenance is known to date.

Fairly small (100 - 130 people at maximum) it consists of a nave and chancel of ragstone rubble with Caen stone quoins and a flint rubble tower. There are excellent stained glass windows which together with the interior have been considerably renovated within the last eight years.

Originally set apart from the village of South Shoebury, in fenland overlooking both sides of the Ness (from which Shoeburyness postal district gets its name) in its early days the church had views of both the Thames Estuary and the North Sea and may well have served as a watch tower in the same way that a sister church, St. Edmund King and Martyr, East Mersea Island did.  Edmund of the East Angles

Now surrounded by the Cambridge Town area of Shoebury the church and its churchyard have lost none of its original air of tranquility and charm.