Elevated above street level on an isolated swathe of grass in the N part of the village stands the cemetery and church of St. Mary, the best-preserved Romanesque church in Rutland. The chancel and its N chapel are of the 13^th c. and in the 14^th c. the S porch, clerestory, and the bell-openings and battlements of the W tower were added. The N aisle was widened in 1874-75 during a major renovation of the fabric. The rest of the church is primarily Romanesque. The W tower and the nave date from the first half of the 12^th c., the N aisle was added c. 1150 – 60 and the S aisle, S doorway and the Priest’s doorway in the S wall of the chancel are c. 1200.

Domesday Book records that in 1086 Morcott was part of the lands owned by King William I through his possession of the manor of Barrowden. In addition to Morcott, there were five other outlying dependencies to Barrowden and among this group of holdings a priest is noted. The earliest reference to a church here is in 1130 when the advowson of the church had been granted by King Henry I to his bowman, Ernisius Balistarius. The Morcott manor to which the advowson was attached remained with the Balistarius descendants into the early 13^th century. Around 1223, Simon St. Liz, seneschal of the bishop of Chichester, received a grant of custody to the land and heir of Richard Balistarius. In 1227, the advowson came under the control of the St. Liz family when Simon married this heir, Anne or Amy. The advowson then was attached to the descent of their manor of Down Hall in nearby Seaton and remained with the St. Liz family until the early 1660s.

As noted above, this is the most complete Romanesque church in Rutland with some very rare design elements. The W oculus window in the W tower is unique in the county and the double-ouroboros design on the N face of the S shared respond capital in the tower arch is extremely rare in Romanesque art as a whole.

The interlace stone insert in the triangle head of the doorway inside the 2^nd stage of the tower is likely a re-set fragment from some other object. In the N arcade, on the lower part of the E respond capital, the SW section of furled leaves not carved on top appears to be an insertion.

The cruciform capitals in the N arcade, and especially that of pier 1, were compared by Pevsner to those at nearby St. Mary, South Luffenham (Rutland) and St. Nicholas, Bringhurst (Leicestershire). The main similarity with Bringhurst is in the ornamentation of the W responds in the N arcades with their double-sheathed cones with inverted lilies in the shields. The similitude of the cruciform shapes of the capitals with the large volutes with terminal fir cones or fruit at both South Luffenham and Morcott is so strong as to suggest the same workshop was active at both locations. Furthering the idea of this connection is the fact that both Morcott and South Luffenham were outlying dependencies of Barrowden manor and both share the same dedication to St. Mary.