Hamble-le-Rice is a village in the Borough of Eastleigh on the E side of the Solent, and 5 miles SE of the centre of Southampton. The River Hamble flows into the Solent immediately S of the village, which is thus a centre for boating and a popular resort. The church stands in the centre of the village and was originally an Alien Priory with the priory buildings, including the cloister, on the S side of the church, but nothing of them stands today (see Hughes and Stamper (1981). The status explains the fact that the nave and chancel are both equally long: the former serving the parish and the latter the priory. There is no chancel arch. At the W end of the nave is a tower of four stages with a parapet, and the nave has N porch at the W end. At the junction of nave and chancel are two small opposed doorways: the N blocked and the S now giving access to a chapel built in 1800. The NE doorway perhaps gave access to a turret or porch on the exterior, for there are signs of a large blocked arch and the S jamb of a doorway projecting from the N nave wall outside the church. On the N side of the chancel is a vestry built in 1911. The most recent addition is the Priory Centre, built in 1990 by Michael Carden of the Radley House Partnership, and extended in 2008. It is an L-shaped building on the S side of the nave, occupying the site of the former priory cloister and consists of a large hall and service rooms built around a courtyard.

The nave and W tower are 12thc work, and the N porch was added in the 15thc. The chancel is 13thc. Romanesque features recorded here are the N nave doorway, the NE and SE nave doorways, the S windows of the nave and the tower W window and stringcourses, and the remains of the NE turret doorway.

Hamble-le-Rice is not recorded in the Domesday Survey, but in the mid-12thc. monks from the Benedictine abbey at Tiron (Eure-et-Loire) had settled here, having obtained the land from William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester (1100-38). The Priory was founded in this period, and the manor remained in the hands of the Prior until 1294, when Edward I seized most of the alien priories in England owing to the war with France. Hamble, and indeed most of the south coast of Hampshire suffered as a result of this as an expedition from France caused much damage in the area. In 1391 William of Wykeham bought Hamble with its holdings as part of the endowment of St Mary's College, Winchester.

Pevsner (1967) remarked that 'the architectural evidence of the present church is extrememly confusing, and can probably be understood only on the assumption of much re-using of parts'. This is especially true of the lateral doorways. The N doorway, under a 15thc porch and facing the village, seems too close to the W end of the nave, and appears to be reset within a large blocked pointed arch that abuts the tower wall, as if it were an arcade. There are also two narrow doorways facing one another at the junction of nave and chancel. They suggest a processional route through the church, especially as the N doorway has chevron ornament on the inside. Matters are clearly not quite this simple, however, as this N doorway, now blocked, is set off-centre within a tall round-headed arch, also blocked. The shaft with capital and chevron voussoirs set to the W of this suggested the W doorway of a porch or turret to VCH, and the entrance to a hanging pulpit to Waghorn. The large arch at the E end of the N side of the nave gave access to an early feature; whether a porch, a chapel or a transept is not clear., but towards the end of the 12thc. it was blocked and the feature removed. Next come the paired E doorways, one of which straddles the blocking at its E end. If the polygonal shaft with its capital and voussoirs belonged to a doorway into this feature, it was either left in situ when the feature was removed, which seems untidy, or was reset there at a later date, which would be unusual.

The sculpture that survives in the N doorway, the W window, and the S window suggest a date c.1160-80, and while the chevron over the NE doorway could be earlier, it does not have to be.