St Peter's church is set in the nortern part of Hayling Island, to the S of Havant. It is built of flint and stine rubble with ashlar dressings and tiled roofs. The church has a 13thc chancel with some alarming post-medieval buttresses stopping it falling out into the road, and an aisled nave roofed in a single span. The wooden bellcote and shingled spirelet is over the E end of the nave, likely a nod to the central tower at the mother church of the island, South Hayling. The S arcade appears to be Early English of the 13thc, but the capitals of the N arcade are the latest Romanesque of the late 12thc.

The Domesday Book considers the villages of North and South Hayling under the same entry, and the church is not mentioned in the 1291 Taxatio. In 1304 there were several petitions to the Bishop of Winchester that the rector of South Hayling celebrate in the "chapel of St Peter, Northwood", showing that it was a dependent chapel.

The VCH, Pevsner (1967) and O'Brien's revision of 2018 all suggest a 13thc date for the font, but it is more likely to be 12thc in origin.