According to A Dictionary of British Place Names, Worlaby derives from an combination of an Old Englishperson name and Old Scandinavian 'by', meaning "a farmstead or a village of a man called Wulfric". In the Domesday Book the village is listed as "Uluricebi" or "Wirichebi". Worlaby was in the Yarborough Hundred of the North Riding of Lindsey. It contained 24.4 households, one villager, 36 freemen, seven ploughlands, and of meadow. The settlement was under the manor of Barnetby le Wold with Earl Harold as its lord in 1066, transferred in 1086 after the Norman Conquest to William son of Nigel, with Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester as Tenant-in-chief to the king William I. In 1872 White's Directory reported that Worlaby had a population of 557 within a parish of 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 parish land was a holding of the Duchy of Lancaster, . Worlaby was the seat of the Belasyse family, particularly John Belasyse, the second son to Thomas, the first Viscount Fauconberg. John Belasyse was created first Baron Belasyse of Worlaby in 1644, and was first lord of the treasury to James II. Seen as being a conspirator in the fictitious Popish Plot, he was "attained, and confined for several years in the Tower". John Belasyse's hospital, founded in 1663 to house poor widows, in 1872 endowed each inmate with £3.10s. yearly, a blue gown, and half a chaldron, of coal, the gift of an estate at Holme in Nottinghamshire, then belonging to the trustees of the Duke of Newcastle. A further allowance to the alms-people was £4.10s. yearly from £100 left for the purpose through an 1812 benefaction. The chancel of St Clement's Church was rebuilt in 1837, the rest of the church "an ancient structure". The church in 1872 contained seating for 150. Within was noted a tablet to Captain A. F. C. Webb, who fell at the 1854 Battle of Inkerman. The incumbency was a vicarage at a value of £378 yearly, and included 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. There existed a Wesleyan and a Primitive Methodist chapel; that for the Wesleyans was built in 1858 for £300. A new schoolroom was erected in 1871 for about £800. The Worlaby post office dispatched and received mail through Brigg. 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.
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. In early 2011 a proposal to site a wind farm on the Carrs met with local opposition.
