Pleasley is a small village about three miles NW of Mansfield. The church lies to the N of the village on the W bank of the River Meden and is a coursed squared sandstone building with sandstone dressings. The church consists of a chancel of the Norman period with a N vestry, a nave altered in the 13thc with windows being enlarged, a S porch, and a Perpendicular W tower added in the late 14th or early 15thc. An early plain specimen of the Decorated style can be seen in the E window of the chancel. The simple Romanesque chancel arch with billet moulding, the circular base of a font carved in 1662 at the W end of the nave, and an octagonal font in the chancel are all that remains of the original building.

There is no mention of Pleasley in the Domesday Survey, or until the reign of King Edward I. Serlo de Plesley (ob.1203) held the manor in the second half of the 12thc, and is thought to have founded the church. Around 1284 Pleasley passed under the lordship of Thomas Bek, Bishop of St. David's (Wales).

The chancel arch is unusually large and imposing for such a small and apparently unimportant church; it can be dated to the beginning of the 12thc.