[1] Before the Norman conquest of England an Anglo-Saxon called Lewin or Leofwine held the manor of Hanwell, along with those of Chinnor and Cowley.

Whereas the conquering Normans dispossessed many Saxon landowners after 1066, Leofwine still held Hanwell manor by the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086.

After Chaucer's death in 1434 Hanwell passed to his widow Maud and then their daughter Alice de la Pole.

[1] In 1498 Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk conveyed the manor to William Cope, who was Cofferer to Henry VII.

[1] In 1790 Catherine's daughter Arabella was married to John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset and received Hanwell from her mother.

In 1776 the floor of the chancel was raised to accommodate a burial vault for the Cope family, but in the 19th century the floor was restored to its former level[1] In 1671 Sir Anthony Cope, 4th Baronet had a turret clock made for St. Peter's by the noted clockmaker George Harris of Fritwell.

In 1587 he was jailed for introducing to the House of Commons a puritan prayer book and a bill for abrogating ecclesiastical law.

Puritan influence at Hanwell was ended in 1658 with the appointment of a Royalist curate, George Ashwell, who was as pious, hardworking and scholarly as his predecessors.

William Cope began building it in 1498, the year he had received the manor of Hanwell from the Duke of Suffolk.

Jennifer Sherwood and Nikolaus Pevsner contend that there was an east range[3] but Mary Lobel et al.[1] maintain that there was none.

The western part of the south range was retained as a farmhouse, and in 1902 some restoration and extensions were made to the surviving building.

The Hanwell Community Observatory was begun on the same site in 1999, following a successful bid for a Royal Society Millennium Award for public outreach in astronomy the previous autumn.

[1] At the end of the 16th century Hanwell's crops included not only wheat, pease, oats and barley but also at least 100 acres (40 ha) of woad.

In 1645 during the English Civil War, Parliamentary troops were billeted in Hanwell for nine weeks and villagers petitioned the Warwickshire Committee of Accounts to pay for feeding them.

Villagers farmed the parish on a two-field open field system until 1768, when Sir Charles Cope, 2nd Baronet bought out the rights of copyholders, life- and leaseholders and enclosed the common lands.

[1] The main road between Banbury and Warwick runs north – south along a ridge in the western part of the parish.

In 1848 George Sackville-West, 5th Earl De La Warr gave a cottage to be used as both the schoolroom and schoolmaster's house.