Heybridge and Maldon now form a single conurbation, with Heybridge to the N. It seems like a small town rather than a large village, and stands at the W end of the Blackwater estuary, 9 miles E of Chelmsford. The church is on the busy main street that runs through the town from E to W.

St Andrew’s consists of a 12thc nave and chancel in a single continuous vessel, with a 19thc S porch and a short 12thc W tower with a pyramid roof. It is built of mixed rubble with ashlar dressings and later brick repairs. Romanesque sculpture survives in the N and S nave doorways, the S chancel doorway, the arch of the W doorway above the present 14thc doorway, two loose capitals inside the nave and fragments of a font bowl built into the interior N wall. There are plain 12thc windows, not recorded here, in the W tower and the lateral walls.

Heybridge (Tidwalditune) was one of the manors with which King Athelstan endowed St Paul’s Cathedral. In 1086 the canons of St Paul’s, London, held the manor of Heybridge, which was assessed at 8 hides, but Ralph Baynard held half a hide and the Hundred did not know how he should have it.

Neither Pevsner nor Bettley recorded the reset font fragments or the loose capitals, although the former are mentioned in the listing text. According to RCHME, in 1922 the font fragments were in the tower. The N and S doorways are similar to those at Tillingham and Little Tey.