Hastingleigh is a small civil parish centred on an escarpment of the Kent Downs.

The parish is three miles east of Wye and ten miles south of Canterbury, extending to the hill-scape of the Devil's Kneading Trough, on the North Downs Way with views towards Ashford, Romney Marsh and the patchy remnant forest of The Weald (between the Greensand Ridge and South Downs).

The church is made of stone, in the Early English style, and has a tower containing one bell: there is a brass to John Halke, d.1604, and Amia his wife, d.1596: The maternal grandparents of Dr William Harvey, who discovered the Circulation of the blood, had links to the village; his mother Joane was born at South Hill, Hastingleigh and married Thomas Harvie of Folkestone, in Hastingleigh Church.

12th-century murals were partially uncovered on the north wall, and south east corner of the church in 1966.

The main route (Churchfield Way) through more populated but larger Wye in the west connects, after a short section then a steep descent outside of the civil parish borders, to Elmsted and then to Canterbury.