'The sister of Hales to the S' according to Pevsner (Pevsner 1999, 391), a Romanesque church which likewise has a thatched apse and nave, and a round W tower. As at Hales, there are flat buttresses on the exterior of the apse but here their edges are unmoulded and there is no blind arcading. The upper stage of the original W tower was rebuilt to a polygonal plan. What nevertheless connects the two churches is the vocabulary of the stunningly elaborate decoration of their 12thc. doorways, here in the S wall of the nave, marking them out as the product of the workshop sometimes called the Yare Valley school, whose distinctive repertory of designs survives at over a dozen churches in the region. Heckingham also retains a Romanesque font.

Heckingham, in the hundred of Clavering, is estimated to have been among the largest 20% of settlements recorded in Domesday Book, and is listed under several owners in 1086, including Roger Bigot, Turold, Ulfkil, Robert of Vaux, Archbishop Stigand, Godric, Bury St Edmunds Abbey, Frodo and Hagni.

Some or all of the sculpture motifs used on the doorway at Heckingham, such as decorated square-section billet, pseudo-colonnettes, bobbin and wheel rosettes, commonly occur on churches in the region, as at Hales, Hellington, Mundham, Thwaite St Mary and in Norwich at the cathedral priory and St Mary Magdalene.

The font at Heckingham is not mentioned in Bond (1908).