It is one of the five Low Villages – South Ferriby, Horkstow, Saxby All Saints, Bonby, and Worlaby – between Brigg and the Humber estuary, named so because of their position below the northern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds.

[4] In 1872 White's Directory reported that Worlaby had a population of 557 within a parish of 3,210 acres (13 km2) that comprised mostly "rich areas or cars extending westward to the navigable river Ancholme, and partly on the Wold hill, on the east side of the village".

The incumbency was a vicarage at a value of £378 yearly, and included 13 acres (0.05 km2) of glebe land—an area of land used to support a parish priest—and a residence which was built in 1860 at a cost of £900.

[5] Professions and trades listed for 1872 included the parish incumbent, the parish curate, the parish clerk & sexton, a schoolmaster who was also the sub-postmaster, a veterinary surgeon, a wheelwright, a blacksmith, a skin dealer, a cattle dealer, two tailors, one of whom was also a grocer, a further grocer, a shopkeeper, two shoemakers, a bricklayer, a brickmaker, a coal dealer & carter, a corn miller, a licensed hawker, a farrier & castrator, a market gardener, ten farmers, and two carriers—horse-drawn wagon operators carrying goods and sometimes people between places of trade—operating between the village and Barton-upon-Humber, Brigg, Caistor and Hull.

[5] The original 13th- to 14th-century Grade II listed parish church dedicated to St Clement[6][7] was re-built between 1873 and 1877, although the early Norman piers of the nave, windows and Late Saxon tower arch were re-used.

[8][11] To the west of the village to the River Ancholme is Worlaby Carrs, an area of arable land converted by Defra to wet grassland as sanctuary for wintering fowl.