Stainton is two miles W of Tickhill and eight miles E of Rotherham. The church is small and has a chancel, nave and W tower. There is a S porch with chapel to E of it which is entered from the nave by a single arch. The building is of magnesium limestone rubble with roughly shaped quoins (Butler 2007; Pevsner 1967; Ryder in Pilling 1989).

Romanesque remains include the chancel arch, window facings in the S wall of chancel and nave, and a blocked chancel doorway; there may be some remains of a doorway reset in the churchyard wall to the W.

In the Domesday Book a combined entry for Dadsley, Stainton and Helaby mentions a priest and a church. Dadsley is thought to be the later Tickhill. It is not clear which of these vills had the church. Stainton was given as the chapel of Stainton with the church of Tickhill to Nostell priory, the gift of the king, confirmed by Thurstan archbishop of York c.1130x1140 (Farrer 1916). The 12thc chapel was dependent on the church of Tickhill. In May 1200 Hugh de Stainton sought against the prior of Nostell the advowson of the chapel of Stainton as his right; the prior said the chapel belonged to his church of Tickhill of the gift of Henry I, whose charter he produced, with other royal and archbishops’ charters, and one from Hugh himself. Hugh said the prior had deceived him (Thompson and Clay 1943).

The archway in the churchyard is suggested by Peter Ryder (in Pilling 1989, 52) to include parts of the former N nave doorway, now replaced, but might perhaps have belonged to the S nave doorway, exterior face.