Nowton is in the Hundred of Thingoe and stands in flat, arable land, recently given over to rape crops, only 2 miles S of the centre of Bury St Edmunds. St Peter's has a nave with a N aisle, a short chancel with a S vestry and a W tower. The nave has a S doorway in situ and a N doorway reset in the 19thc. aisle. Also reset in the E wall of this aisle is a plain 12thc lancet. The S nave windows are round-headed but 19thc. and the S wall of the nave is mortar rendered. The N aisle is neo-Romanesque (Pevsner says 'painful neo-Norman') dating from 1843. There is no clerestorey but a dormer in the roof. The arcade is of four bays, and the exterior wall in flint with stone dressings, has the usual overblown detailing on the windows and a gable over the doorway. The chancel is ofc.1300, but was restored, and the vestry added, in 1876. The flint west tower is 14thc. and has no buttresses but a tall plinth and a polygonal south bell stair. When the church was visited the interior was being repainted and no internal photography was possible. The only Romanesque work is on the two nave doorways.

Nowton occurs in the will of Theodred, Bishop of London (942 x c.951) as a bequest to St Edmund's church, Bury. According to the Domesday Survey it was held by St Edmundsbury abbey as a manor both before the Conquest and in 1086. It consisted of 4 carucates of ploughland, 4 acres of meadow and woodland for 5 pigs. There was a mill and a church with 8 acres of free land.

St Edmund Way benefice, i.e. Bradfield Combust, Great Whelnetham, Hawstead, Lawshall, Nowton and Stanningfield.

The chamfered orders, keeled roll and waterleaf capitals suggest a date in the 1170s or '80s for both doorways.