Yateley, in the NE corner of Hampshire, has been absorbed by the Blackwater conurbation. The church stands on the S side of a triangular green at the E end of the historic village. Before reconstruction after an arson attack in 1979, the building comprised a chancel with a vestry and organ chamber on its S side, a three-bay nave with a S aisle and N porch, a W tower, and a SW vestry. As rebuilt in 1981, the nave and S aisle were superseded by an enlarged space for worship, with modern facilities (hall, office, kitchen, lavatories, etc.) provided to the SW. The former chancel (now chapel), N wall, N porch, W tower, and vestries survived the fire. The font - generally thought to date from the 14thc. - has been moved from the W tower to the chancel. The N doorway is Romanesque.

Yateley formed part of Crondall and does not seem to have had an independent entry in the Domesday Survey of 1086. St Peter's was a chapel dependent on Crondall.

The N wall of the nave, exposed during repairs in 1952, includes long-and-short work and dates from the 11thc. The remainder of the building was later: the chancel of the 13thc., the S aisle arcade of the 14thc., and the timber-framed tower of the 15thc., but heavily restored by A. W. Blomfield in 1878. The N doorway was uncovered in 1901.

The church was badly damaged by fire (arson) on 5 May 1979. The architect Derek Wren had been working on plans for a church hall and, although he had never designed a church before, was asked to design the rebuild. He worked alongside Corinne Bennett, architect to Winchester Cathedral, as consulting architect. The repairs and extensions were completed and the church consecrated in November 1981. Much of the present building (including hall, parish offices, kitchen and lavatories) dates from that time, though the N wall, tower and chancel (now a chapel) were retained.

The doorway is similar to the reset and reworked S doorway of Farnborough, which has been dated to the late 12thc. (because the impost blocks match those of the more obviously late 12thc. S doorway), and to the S doorway of Linkenholt, which was dated c.1200 by Pevsner and Lloyd (1967) and Bullen et al (2010). These writers dated the Yateley doorway, very broadly, to the 12thc.