By the nineteenth century St Michael's required major work. Rather than replacing the historic west tower, the rebuilding retained it while providing a new main body for the church. This created the building remembered in many twentieth-century photographs of Pitsea Mount.
The nave and chancel were rebuilt in 1871 to designs by Sir Arthur William Blomfield, one of the Victorian period's prolific church architects. The new work was attached to the much older sixteenth-century west tower, producing a church that combined medieval fabric with Victorian rebuilding.
An inventory published in 1923 recorded important historic features associated with the church. These included three sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bells, an early-sixteenth-century font and early-sixteenth-century masons' marks around the east doorway of the tower. Such details demonstrate that the site's importance extended beyond the surviving external stonework.
The Victorian rebuilding did not solve the site's long-standing structural difficulties. By 1899 the walls and windows were reported as fitting very badly. The problems therefore continued only a few decades after Blomfield's reconstruction.
At this time St Michael's still stood in a landscape very different from modern Pitsea. Roads were smaller, the surrounding development was sparse and the Mount related much more naturally to the community around it. The tower's elevated position made the church conspicuous from surrounding countryside and routes.
St Michael's was placed on the statutory list at Grade II on 24 March 1950. Today the designation applies to the surviving tower and altar. Historic England identifies both architectural craftsmanship and the site's importance to understanding Pitsea's history as reasons for protection.