Hardwick

Several prehistoric finds have been recovered in field-walking surveys or in topsoil stripping. These include a Palaeolithic hand-axe and some Mesolithic to Neolithic and Early Bronze Age flints and Late Iron Age pottery from north of the church and a Neolithic to Early Bronze Age flint scraper from south of Folly Farm. Roman pottery and tile was also found in these investigations and from west of the church, which may suggest a Roman settlement here. A Roman ditch with associated pottery was also found in a pipeline cutting to the north of the village.

The oldest surviving building is St Mary's church, which has a Saxon nave, fourteenth century tower, fifteenth century clerestory and was restored in the nineteenth century. A medieval jug rests in one of the wall recesses. There are historical records of a medieval to post-medieval watermill and dovecote attached to the manor of Hardwick.

The oldest secular house is Hardwick Place which used to be the vicarage and dates to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, with a few later alterations. Many of the other buildings date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Pear Tree Cottage and The Maltings. There are documentary and cartographic sources of a windmill, a turnpike road and other buildings in Hardwick, probably dating to the post-medieval period and a brick kiln dating to the nineteenth century on Bushmead Road.