This aisleless church has a thatched nave and chancel. The windows, N porch and W tower date from the 15thc, while the carved Romanesque S doorway surviving in the flint wall of the nave, together with a deeply-splayed round-arched recess low in the N wall of the chancel, indicate that the structure of the building is substantially earlier.

Thurlton was in the King's Hundred of Clavering, once held by Archbishop Stigand (deposed 1070) but, at the time of the Domesday survey, by William de Noyers. A church is mentioned in Oder's land at Thurlton in Domesday Book. Both Roger Bigod and Ralph of Beaufour had holdings in Thurlton at the time of the survey.

Some of the features of the S doorway, such as the double-cone, radial billet and pseudo-colonnettes, identify it as the product of a team of sculptors employing a distinctive set of motifs whose work can be seen on a number of church doorways surviving in a triangle of land between the converging arms of the rivers Yare and Waveney.