As with Heckingham to the N, Hales is a two-cell Romanesque church with a thatched nave and apsidal chancel, and a round W tower. Like Heckingham, the exterior of the apse at Hales has flat buttresses but here they have moulded edges. Hales also differs in having blind arcading on the exterior of the apse. Both churches have remarkably ornate doorways displaying a strikingly similar repertory of motifs, marking them as the output of a workshop active in the region around the mid-12thc. Hales has a decorated doorway in both the N and the S walls of the nave.

The Domesday survey records that Roger Bigod was tenant-in-chief of Hales, which was in the hundred of Clavering.

Distinctive sculpture motifs surviving at Hales, including pseudo-colonnettes on raised plinths, square billet with drilled decoration, and wheel rosettes, testify to the activity of a Romanesque workshop, sometimes dubbed the Yare Valley school, whose output can also be seen on church doorways across the region as at Ashby, Chedgrave, Heckingham, Hellington, Mundham and Thwaite St Mary.