Church Of St Helena

The Church of St Helena is a church with origins dating back to the 11th century, undergoing significant development through the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. It was restored and extended in 1897-8 by C. Hodgson Fowler. The church is constructed of rubble and dressed magnesian limestone, with red tile and graduated slate roofs.

The main structure comprises a three-bay nave with a west bellcote and a north aisle, alongside a narrower, single-bay chancel with a lean-to north vestry. The nave features a chamfered plinth, a west angle buttress, and quoins to the east. A porch, inserted between bays 1 and 2, has ashlar side walls and a wooden arch-braced gable truss with a scalloped bargeboard. The original 12th-century south door retains two orders of shafts with carved capitals, a tympanum featuring a carved dragon, and carved arches with beakheads and chevrons, although the hoodmould has been cut back. Bay 1 has a restored square-headed window of two ogee lights, a similar, taller window is in bay 2, and bay 3 features quoins and a 14th-century square-headed window of three ogee lights. The west end showcases central pilaster buttresses between two quoined lancet windows (the left one being 19th century); the upper gable has been rebuilt with a bellcote featuring a string course beneath two pointed-arched openings and a coped gable with a cross. The north aisle (1897) incorporates a reset 12th-century north door with a plain round arch, a reset 14th-century window of two ogee lights beneath a square head, and 19th-century three-light windows in a matching style, alongside an ashlar flue. The chancel is lower and has a 14th-century three-light south window with cusping and a square-headed, hollow-chamfered surround. The east wall is of coursed dressed stone and has a reset 14th-century three-light window with intersecting tracery set within a pointed, double-chamfered surround. The vestry (1897-8) features a two-light mullioned window to the north and a single-light east window above a basement door.

Inside, a well-preserved 12th-century north arcade was revealed during the 1897 restoration; the westernmost bay has a semi-octagonal west respond with a crocketed capital and a rounded east respond with a waterleaf capital, supported by a double-chamfered arch. A wallstone pier is between bays 1 and 2, while the remaining bays feature cylindrical piers and rounded responds with foliate capitals, supporting plain round arches. A central pier incorporates a carved "sheela-na-gig" facing southwest. The chancel arch is of 12th-century design, with rounded inner responds and shafts to the west, cushion capitals with masks, plain imposts, a roll-moulding, and incised zig-zag. A pointed-arched piscina recess contains a square bowl, and to the right of the chancel south window is the chamfered jamb of an earlier window. A font features a tapered cylindrical bowl on a 19th-century pedestal. The church also contains a Jacobean altar rail with turned balusters, a carved top rail, and newels with acorn finials, along with late 19th-century stained glass by Kempe. The church is believed to have been founded around 1080 by John de Builli. The north aisle was constructed in 1897 as a memorial to William Bradford, who was baptised there on 19 March 1589; Bradford sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and became Governor of Plymouth Colony in 1621. Notes on the restoration were published in The Doncaster Review in July 1896.