Dauntsey Lock is on the Wilts & Berks Canal (presently being restored), the course of which runs alongside the Bristol-London mainline railway.

Dauntsey Park House, north of the church and overlooking the Avon, has a 14th-century core; it was remodelled in the late 17th or early 18th, and again c. 1800.

The oldest memorial in the church is that of Joan Dauntesey who died c. 1455 and her third husband John Dewale[10] who predeceased her.

Joan Dauntsey married again, almost immediately after Russell's death, to Sir John Stradling (d.1435), the second son of the lord of St Donat's Castle in Glamorgan.

The marriage was possibly arranged by Russell's son-in-law Sir Gilbert Denys (d.1422) who was from Glamorgan and was related to the Stradlings.

The couple were fined heavily in 1417 for their transgression, as the following entry in the Patent Rolls dated 8 July 1418 reveals:[12] "Pardon, for 40 marks paid in the hanaper, to John Stradlyng, chivaler, and Joan late the wife of Maurice Russell, chivaler, tenant in chief, of their trespass in intermarrying without licence."

Joan outlived Stradling and married, thirdly, John Dewale, with whom she is buried, as is witnessed by an alabaster slab in front of the high altar in St James's Church, showing the couple life size, he being dressed in full armour.

Around the margin of the slab runs a much obliterated inscription: Hic jacet Johannes Dewale armiger et Domina Johanna uxor eius quondam uxor Domini Mauricii Russel militis qui quondam Johannes Dewale obiit mense...die ultimo MCCCC...III.

[13] Dauntsey folklore relates that the parish priest named Cuthbert murdered Edward, the last male member of the Stradling family.

Above the tomb are fragments of a stained glass window with Sir John and his wife kneeling with their sons and daughters.

His political views differed from his brothers; he sat in judgement on Charles I and with the Restoration was condemned as a regicide; he had died in 1655, and his coffin was to be dug up and destroyed as a traitor, but it was never found.

[11] The parish church, on the edge of the village, can be dated back to 1177 when Malmesbury Abbey claimed it; in 1263 it was given to the Lord of Dauntsey Park House.

[2] The Great Western Main Line from London to Bristol was built in 1841, following a similar route, to the north of the canal.

[20] The road through Dauntsey Lock, linking Chippenham with Lyneham and Royal Wootton Bassett, was formerly the A420 which was a main route from Bristol to Swindon and Oxford.

[22] The establishment was bought in 2014 by the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust, which has offices and a community meeting room on the same site.