St Mary's is a large Victorian church from 1839 (Ryder 1982, 96; Borthwick Institute Faculty 1896/10), with blackened stone by past industries. It is on the side of a steep hill in the centre of the village (Rawmarsh High Street). From the S, there is a wide view over the built-up valley towards Rotherham. The approaches to the church still have their Victorian railings on all sides. The interest to the Corpus is the S doorway and a cross-shaft formerly in the churchyard (Pevsner 1967), now inside the S entrance (the base of the W tower).

There was no church or priest recorded here in the Domesday Book. By the time of Henry II, there was a church; in the mid 12thc an ecclesiastical building at Rawmarsh was given to Welbeck abbey. In 1204 the building was called a chapel (Hunter 1831, 45, Thompson and Clay 1943, 27-8).

Hunter (1831, 48) believed the three columns on either side of the porch door to be part of the original church. Later commentators recognized the S door incorporated ‘parts of an original Norman doorway’ (Pevsner 1969, 399) and ‘the present building preserves a plain and heavily retooled Norman door’ (Ryder 1982, 116). Collingwood (1915, 233) saw the cross in the churchyard, south of the church. It has a head which, he says ‘appears to be modern’. Baldwin Brown (1937, 148) says ‘there stands now in a conspicuous position south of the church an obviously Saxonic tapering shaft, crowned with a cross-head with enrichment in the same style that looks suspiciously modern’. Brown gives a photographic illustration (pl. XXXIX) of the cross-shaft standing in the grass, and there is similarly a drawing by ‘T.R.C.’ in the church [DSCN 7342]. The cross-head had disappeared by the time Peter Ryder visited, c. 1982. Coatsworth 2008, 288 says the ‘stone type matches that of the Barnburgh 2 shaft above (p. 286) and has ornament on a chamfer comparable to one used at Thrybergh; it also has two foliage patterns and pellets. The shaft is 12thc.’