Somerford Keynes lies on the county boundary with Wiltshire, between Cirencester, Swindon and Malmesbury. The parish was transferred from Wiltshire to Gloucestershire in 1897. The church, which was largely rebuilt in the early 13thc and restored in 1875 by Frederick Sandham Waller, is a rubble stone with flush quoins building; it consists of a chancel, a nave with a N aisle, a S porch and a W tower of three stages. There is an Anglo-Saxon doorway in the aisleless part of the N wall of the nave (Taylor 1969, 68-73), and some late Anglo-Saxon sculptural fragments (Bryant and Viner 1999, 155-8). The surviving Romanesque sculpture consists of the N chancel window, the font, and a fragment of voussoir.

In 685 a nephew of the King of Mercia made a grant of land to Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne; the Anglo-Saxon doorway might be the remains of a church founded by Aldhelm. The Domesday Survey records that Alweard held the manor of 'Sumreford' in 1066, and the Bishop of Lisieux held it in 1086. The manor valued £7. By 1211 the manor was held by William de Cahaignes, an ancestor of the Keynes family: Ralph de Keynes of Dodford acquired it during the reign of Henry I, and the village was named after him.