Cold Aston, also known as Aston Blank, is located in the high Cotswolds beside the Foss Way some 14 miles E of Cheltenham. The church, which may have borne a dedication to St Mary in 1545, was dedicated to St Andrew by the late 18thc. It is built of coursed, squared and dressed limestone and consists of a chancel, nave with S porch, and W tower. The chancel and nave date from the 12thc, the nave S doorway being of three orders. The nave N doorway has a badly worn tympanum and was blocked before Sir Stephen Glynne’s visit in 1857. Externally, as observed by Glynne, the nave wall is inset at the E end. The building is one of a small number of Gloucestershire churches with no E window. The church was restored by John Edward Knight Cutts in 1876; architectural fragments found at that time, including parts of a Saxon cross (described in Bryant 2012) and some Romanesque elements, were reset in the porch W wall.

Ethelbald, king of Mercia, granted 20 cassati in Aston and Notgrove to Osred, a member of the Hwiccian royal family around 740 (Cart. Sax. ed. Birch, I, 239-40; Herbert 2001, 9-20). The estate, which apparently had 10 cassati in Aston, was given later to the church of Worcester and in 1086 Drogo fitz Pons held ten hides in Aston from the bishop of Worcester's manor of Withington. Drogo's estate descended to his nephew Walter and thence to Walter's successors, the Cliffords (Herbert 2001, 9-20).