Orcop is a small dispersed village in the S of the county, 8 miles S of Hereford and a similar distance W of Ross-on-Wye. It is in a hilly, mixed farming district, and Orcop itself consists of little more than the church and the remains of a motte and bailey nearby. It is at the foot of Orcop Hill whose summit, a mile NW of the church, rises to a height of 293m. Orcop Hill is also the name of the larger village on its eastern slopes. Orcop church, however, stands in isolation except for a few houses. It consists of chancel with a N vestry, nave with a N aisle and a S porch, and a W tower, timber clad in its upper part and carrying a timber bell stage with a short spire. None of the fabric is obviously Romanesque: the aisle is 13thc; the chancel of c.1300; the nave windows indicate a rebuilding in the 14thc, and the tower perhaps 16thc in origin, but the church was comprehensively restored by Thomas Nicholson in 1860-61. The only Romanesque sculpture here is a pillar piscina bowl.

Orcop is not mentioned by that name in the Domesday Survey. It was within the region of Archenfield, a semi-autonomous Welsh district with its own customs (described in Domesday). It is there noted that King Gruffydd and Bleddyn laid this land waste before 1066; therefore what it was like at that time is not known.

Both Pevsner and RCHME list the dedication as St Mary’s, which was indeed the medieval dedication. The nearby church of Brampton Abbotts also retains a pillar piscina bowl of clunch and in the form of a scalloped capital, although that one is circular.