The church of St Stephen is located in the small village of Up Natley (formerly known as Nately Eastrop or Upper Nately), 5 miles E of Basingstoke. It owes its distinctive bands of red brick and flintwork to a thorough remodelling of 1844. At that time the nave was refaced and a new chancel, S vestry and W tower were added. The chancel arch and N doorway are surviving 12thc. features.

In 1086 Up Nately was part of the manor of Mapledurwell, held by Hubert de Port. No church was mentioned. In the early 12thc. Adam de Port created Andwell Priory – as a cell of the French Benedictine abbey of Thiron – nearby. However, St Stephen's remained a chapelry of Old Basing: according to a document of 1244, ‘the chapel of Nately was to be served as of olden days by the vicar of Basingstoke’ (Hare 2014, 3). The nave was refenestrated and reroofed in the 15thc. then refaced in 1844.

The chancel arch and N doorway have the same distinctive type of impost block, with a bevelled surface beneath the quirk, and are probably contemporaneous. Despite the simplicity of both features, the appearance of dogtooth and chamfered arrises pushes the date into the second half of the 12thc. Pevsner & Lloyd (1967), followed by Bullen et al (2010), dated the doorway to c.1200.

There is a similar doorway at Greywell, located 1km to the SE.