The village is on the edge of the Chilterns, above the Thames Valley, in the South Oxfordshire district. It is 5 miles SE of Wallingford and 7 miles NW of Reading. The church is on the northern edge of the village and was built of flint with ashlar dressings by H. J. Underwood of Oxford on the site of the old church. It consists of a nave with a S porch and a bellcote over the W gable, and a chance; with a N vestry and an apsidal E end. It is said to have copied the medieval church but to be 20 ft. longer. A drawing survives indicating a 12thc date for the medieval building (Oxford MS. Top. Oxon. b 220, f. 213). The pillar piscina outside the S porch is the only Romanesque feature.

Woodcote is not recorded by name in the Domesday Survey, but was included as a part of the parish of South Stoke. This was held by the Bishop of Dorchester, possibly before the 10thc. After the see was moved to Lincoln, South Stoke was granted to Eynsham Abbey, and confirmation that Woodcote was included with South Stoke is supplied by Henry I's 1109 confirmation of the possessions. By the end of the 12thc Woodcote was a manor in its own right, held by a family that took its name from the manor, and held it from the Abbot of Eynsham. In 1406 the church was referred to as the chapel of St Leonard.

VCH (1962) describes the pillar piscina as 'the old font', the List Description ignores it and the Historic Environment Record simply copies that, but Sherwood and Pevsner probably correctly identify it as a Norman pillar piscina on a modern pillar. It is certainly too small to be a 12thc font.