The original cathedral wasn't built to be a cathedral. When construction began in 1876, the Diocese of Middlesbrough didn't yet exist. The Sussex Street church, opened on 21 August 1878, was simply meant to seat 1,500 people in the old St. Hilda's district. Then everything changed at the end of that same year. In December 1878, Rome carved a new diocese out of Beverley, and Middlesbrough's parish church was suddenly elevated to cathedral status. On 18 December 1879, Richard Lacy was consecrated there as the first Bishop of Middlesbrough. For just over a century, that improvised cathedral served the diocese, until structural failures and the 1984 fire made its loss inevitable.

The new cathedral at Coulby Newham was conceived as a building of its moment. The Second Vatican Council had reshaped Catholic worship, demanding altars visible to everyone and liturgy that all could hear. Architect Frank Swainston drew up the outline plan, but he died before completing the work. His assistant Peter Fenton finished the drawings and designed the furnishings, advised by J.O. Tarren and Professor Patrik Nuttgens. Augustine Harris, Bishop of Middlesbrough, blessed the foundation stone on 3 November 1985 and consecrated the completed building on 15 May 1988. The result is modern and luminous, sharing a family resemblance with the Roman Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. Sanctuary, nave, Blessed Sacrament chapel, sacristy, church hall, narthex, and campanile all sit within one continuous building complex.

The cathedral's organ was built by the firm of Schumacher in Belgium, working to a specification developed by Dr John Rowntree of the Organ Advisory Group. It has two manuals and pedals, sixteen stops, and mechanical key and stop action. The case is ash, matching the rest of the cathedral furnishings, and its asymmetric shape acknowledges that the instrument sits off the central axis of the building, fitted to the geometry of the internal roof lines. The Choral Foundation, led by the Cathedral and Diocesan Director of Music, encompasses the Cathedral Choir with its Senior Choristers and Choral Scholars, the Cathedral Consort, and the Cathedral Junior Choristers. They sing the main Solemn Mass on Sunday mornings. Choral Vespers and Benediction fall on Wednesday evenings.

Coulby Newham is residential Middlesbrough's southern frontier, a 1970s expansion of suburbs and shopping that wraps around the cathedral site. The building is approached not through medieval streets but past parking lots and arterial roads. There is something honest about that. The diocese it serves stretches across North Yorkshire and East Yorkshire, encompassing fishing ports, market towns, the moors, and the coast. The cathedral itself has no ancient stones, no gothic vaults, no centuries of accumulated grime and memory. What it has instead is light, room for everyone to see the altar, and a community in continuous use of the space. For a building tradition that has been about permanence for two thousand years, this insistence on the present is its own kind of statement.