Church Of Saint Helen

The Church of Saint Helen is a Grade I listed building located on Main Street in Wheldrake. The church features a 14th-century west tower and a nave with a five-sided apse that was constructed in 1779. A wooden plaque in the tower notes that the church was rebuilt and the tower repaired in 1778 and 1779 by churchwardens William Walker and Thomas Petch, under the guidance of John Simpson, the curate.

The tower is made of magnesian limestone ashlar, while the nave is built from pinkish-brown brick with red brick and ashlar dressings, topped with a Welsh slate roof. The two-stage west tower includes short diagonal buttresses and a niche for a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the right side. It features a pointed entrance with a plank door under a hoodmould in a double-chamfered surround, along with a three-light window that has intersecting tracery and quatrefoils at the top. The first stage has a band, and there are twin-light bell-openings on each side with cinquefoil heads, topped with battlements and pinnacles.

The nave and chancel have a plinth and a south entrance to the first bay, which includes double plank doors with ornamental ironwork hinges beneath a red gauged brick round arch with ashlar imposts and a keystone. Above this entrance is an oculus in a red gauged brick surround. The nave features tall, round-arched windows with red gauged brick dressings, ashlar keystones, sills, and an impost band, along with a moulded ashlar eaves band and coping. The apse has similar windows on three sides and a continuous impost and eaves band, and it is separately roofed.

Inside, the church has a moulded cornice and a plaster cove to the flat ceiling, along with a panelled dado. The tower arch is double-chamfered and four-centred. The interior fittings are from the 19th century, and there is an octagonal font dating from around 1300.