Hatfield Peverel is a large village in the Braintree district of central Essex, 5 miles NE of Chelmsford and 7 miles S of Braintree. It straddles the former Roman road from London to Colchester, represented at this point by the A12. The modern village is on the S side of the road, with the church on its E edge.

The present church is the nave of a former Benedictine priory. The original building was cruciform, and to this a N aisle was added in the 15thc and a S aisle in 1873, by G. E. Street. The walls are of flint rubble, but almost entirely modern. The Romanesque W doorway is recorded below.

Hatfield Peverel was held by Aethelmaer before the Conquest, and by Ranulf Peverel in demesne in 1086, when it was assessed at 9 hides and 82 acres. Following the account in VCH, a priory was founded here in the reign of William II by Ingelrica, wife of Ranulph Peverel, as a college of secular canons dedicated to St Mary Magdalen. She ended her days here, and her son William Peverel converted the house into a Benedictine cell of St Albans Abbey. The dedication was changed to Mary the Virgin, and the advowson passed to St Albans, where it remained. Suckling's account is rather more entertaining: Ingelrica was the daughter of a Saxon nobleman, and mistress of William the Conqueror, who founded the college in atonement for the errors of her early life (hence the dedication to St Mary Magdalen), She spent jher last years here, but before that she was allowed by William the Conqueror to marry Ranulph Peverell, with whom she bore William Peverell, a legitimate son.

The W doorway probably dates from c.1125-50: certainly it is neither much earlier nor much later,