A very small church. Thorgumbald was linked to Paull until 1954, when it was joined to Burstwick; it became a separate parish only in 1988. In 2003 older people could remember walking across the fields to Paull for services. For about a century it had a W tower in brick but this was demolished in 1858. Despite the modest remains, J. E. Morris’s remark, that ‘it is scarcely worth getting the key’, is unusually dismissive.

Pevsner and Neave 1995 notes that 'the original chancel stood to the E of present building; there is a section of a jamb of a chancel arch in the E wall.'

Outside, the fabric is very mixed, with much rebuilding and patching in brick. Inside, the nave and chancel are undivided. Of Romanesque age are the blocked S doorway in the nave and a reset doorway in the S wall of the chancel which has a decorated hoodmould on the interior face. There is also a plain cylindrical font.

Drew de Bevrere held Burstwick, to which manor the soc of Thorn belonged. The revenue of Thorn (church) was granted to the Abbey of St Martin d’Auchy in Normandy by Stephen Earl of Aumale; this connection was overseen by Burstall priory on behalf of the abbey in Normandy. Burstall was a cell of Aumale abbey.

The font is certainly not in a Wolds oolitic limestone. Since the revenues of Thorn went to the Abbey of St. Martin d’Auchy in Normandy, and the Humber was accessible, it would have been as easy to have a font from Normandy as anywhere: therefore plausibly Caen stone was used.