Abbess Roding is one of a group of eight villages called Roding in the SW of the county, 8 miles E of Harlow and 9 miles W of Chelmsford. The group is spread over a wide area, so that they lie in three separate boroughs (Chelmsford, Uttlesford and Epping Forest). Abbess Roding is in the Epping Forest district, and stands on the line of the Roman road from London to Bury St Edmund’s. The village is set in flat, mostly arable farmland, and consists of a few dwellings along a minor road, with the church and hall in the centre. The church consists of a nave and chancel with a W tower carrying a Hertfordshire spike. There are N and S doorways to the nave, the S with a timber porch, and the N used as the entrance to a vestry built around it. The nave was rebuilt in the 14thc and the chancel in the 15thc. In the 19thc the church was restored and the tower and vestry added. The only Romanesque feature is the font.

Abbess Roding was held in 1066 by Leofhild as a manor and as 3 virgates, and in 1086 by Geoffrey Martel from Geoffrey de Mandeville. Domesday records that the manor also included woodland for 40 pigs and 15 acres of meadow. The hundred testified, however, that the land was possessed by the Abbey of Barking, which soon regained it and held it until the Dissolution. The abbey also held the church and its advowson until the Dissolution.

Pevsner (1954) dates the font to the late 12thc and identifies the flat disc above the spiral on the S face as the sun. Bettley and Pevsner (2007) accept the late 12thc date and compare it to fonts at Little Laver and Fryerning, which are both by the same workshop and share many motifs. Similar motifs also appear on the Purbeck font at Moreton.