Kingsclere is a large village in the Basingstoke and Deane district of N Hampshire, 8 miles NW of Basingstoke and 6 miles S of Newbury, across the border in Berkshire. The church stands on the W side of Swan Street, the main retail street in the village, and is a floint building with ashlar dressings, originally a cruciform Norman church but rebuilt by Hellyer of Ryde in 1848-49. It has a nave, chancel, transepts and a crossing tower with a SW stair turret, as well as a S chapel to the chancel. Of this, the nave walls with small, high lancet windows, and the N doorway are 12thc. work. The chancel belongs to the 13thc., but again is largely of 1848, and the S chapel dates from c.1300. Romanesque fragments are visible in the exterior walls, and there is a Purbeck font.

Kingsclere was held by King Edward at farm in 1066, and by King William in 1086. The commissioners did not know how many hides, but there was land for 16 ploughs with 3 in demesne and the rest used by some 200 inhabitants. There was a church in Kingsclere that was given by King William to the Abbey of St Peter in Winchester. A further hide in Kingsclere was held by Saewulf and Godwine before the Conquest, and by Faderlin from Hugh de Port in 1086. Finally the King's Thegns Ravelin and Leofwine held lands in 1086 that they had held in King Edward's time: 2 hides for Ravelin and 1 virgate for Leofwine.

The king's farm remained in royal hands until 1107, when Henry I gave it to the church of St Mary in Rouen; a grant that remained in force until the reign of Edward II when it returned to the Crown owing to the wars with France.

The restoration of 1848 was so comprehensive that little of what may appear to be Norman is completely trustworthy apart from most of the N doorway the Purbeck font bowl, the reset fragments and parts of the crossing arches. The arch supports are completely unreliable, and large parts of the arches themselves have been replaced. The exterior faces of the nave windows were renewed when the entire exterior was refaced with flint, but parts of the interior of a few of the windows may be original. That said, Kingsclere remains a church of considerable interest. In the crossing the W face of the E arch is largely reliable and contains an unusual order of multi-roll centripetal chevron with discs dependent on the points that is also seen at East Wittering (Sussex).

The font is one of the finest Purbeck fonts in the county, ranking alongside Goodworth Clatford or Minstead, but completely different from either in its ornamentation.