The main focus of the village, on the lower slopes of the Clent Hills, was on the outskirts, where Hagley Hall and the parish church of St John the Baptist can be found.

Prior to the creation of the Parish Council by the Local Government Act 1894, village affairs were run by the ratepayers of a vestry committee based on St John the Baptist Church.

Among these, Sir John Lyttelton was implicated in Essex's Rebellion and his brother Humphrey was hanged, drawn and quartered for sheltering men involved in the Gunpowder Plot on his Hagley estate, including his nephew Stephen.

His brother Charles, eventually Bishop of Carlisle, was also born at Hagley and was buried there in the family church of St John the Baptist.

The original wooden church dedicated to Saint John the Baptist was eventually rebuilt in stone under the De Hagley family, of which there are still traces.

From 1747 dates Louis-François Roubiliac’s memorial to Lucy Lyttelton; there is also an oval immersion font from this period, which was discarded after the virtual rebuilding of the church in Gothic style by George Edmund Street in the second half of the 19th century.

This consists of a towerless stone-built nave and chancel in what Nikolaus Pevsner describes as "uninspired" Perpendicular style[13] and has a series of windows by Francis Skeat.

Built in 1857, it was replaced in 1905 by the Free Church now on Worcester Road, whose new building continues to play a central role in the community.

[20] The inhabitants were predominantly engaged in agriculture; thirteen farms are recorded in the 18th century, eighteen in the early 20th, although by the end of it only two remained.