The church which is dedicated to St Mary has a tower built in the 15th century . The chapel is dedicated to St Juthware or Judith who was a Saxon saint that has her place in the calendar of Saints as July 13th and not many people outside of the village are aware of her fate and that this is a place of death and martyrdom.
The name is thought to have come from Halgan Stone or Holy Place and it was visited in the 6th century by monks who found a few Christians here preaching the new faith which was just coming into England, they also taught handicrafts and thus Halstock became a place of pilgrimage in the days of Judith, who was herself a very pious Christian and she lived in the village with a brother and three sisters (the latter becoming saints in Cornwall).

When their mother passed away they stayed here with their father who eventually remarried but their new stepmother was a very jealous person, and when one day Judith said she had pains in her chest her stepmother suggested an application of fresh made cheese to her chest would help and Judith complied. Her stepmother then informed Judith's brother Bana that she was pregnant and he was well know to have a short temper confronted his sister as she left the church. Judith denied the accusation but with milk seeping from the cheese starting to penetrate her clothes she was not believed and her brother drew his sword and beheaded her. It was at this point that Judith is said to have picked up her head and walked back inside the church and placed her head on the altar as an offering.

Judith was buried in the church but her body was exhumed in the 10th century and given a final burial at Sherborne and it is said that many miracles have happened at her tomb.

The local Inn has kept her memory alive by being called The Quiet Woman but now the Inn has been sold

Judith's memory in the village was for many years most obvious in the name of the local inn, The Quiet Woman, whose inn sign depicted Judith carrying her own head. On my last visit however the sign had gone and the inn was closed and is now holiday accommodation.

The village shop was closed in 1991 and the villagers rallied round to support what was called Halstock Village Shop Ltd, which was formed to reopen not only the shop but the post office as well. And recently a new shop has been built in the village centre complete with a post office, a community room and two residential flats.

A Romano-British villa was found at Halstock, it was a Late Iron Age settlement from the first centuries BC to AD and a series of ditches and gullies were revealed. This villa did not seem to represent a continuity of settlement beginning no earlier than mid-second century AD.

It was a villa arranged around three sides of an area 110 m across that was living areas, bath house, working and agricultural buildings. And in the enclosed courtyard was evidence of a water distribution system that included stone lined tanks and culvers that were fed from a nearby spring.