Church of St Helen is a Grade II* listed building in the East Lindsey local planning authority area, England. First listed on 9 March 1967. Church.
Church of St Helen
- WRENN ID
- fallen-passage-hawk
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- East Lindsey
- Constituency
- Louth and Horncastle MP: Victoria Atkins (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 9 March 1967
- Type
- Church
- Address
- Church of St Helen, Gayton Le Wold
- OS grid reference
- TF 229 848
- Coordinates
- 53.34651, -0.15392
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St Helen is a parish church built in 1847 by W. A. Nicholson of Lincoln, designed in a fanciful Gothic style. It features lined stucco with ashlar dressings and slate roofs, comprising a western tower, nave, and chancel. The two-stage tower has an octagonal belfry and spire, with a moulded plinth and gabled, stepped, set-back buttresses that end in an embattled parapet adorned with eight pinnacles. The belfry contains eight trefoil-headed lights separated by narrow buttresses, and above it is another embattled parapet with a short, recessed, panelled, and ribbed spire. The upper stage of the tower has single lancet windows on both the south and north walls. The west door features traceried panels within a deeply concave moulded surround, topped by a quatrefoil light in a circular moulded frame.
The nave's side walls have set-back mid-wall buttresses that are gabled and decorated with grotesque heads. A parapet with trefoil piercings is surmounted by angle and mid-wall pinnacles, and each side has two pairs of trefoil-headed windows. The chancel includes a parapet with a pierced zigzag motif filled with trilobes, and the east window consists of three cusped-headed lights with panel tracery. All windows are topped with concave moulded hoods and portrait human head label stops.
Inside, the pointed arches of the tower and chancel feature angle shafts, moulded heads, hoods, and floriate label stops. The rear arches of the windows are hooded with floriate stops. The east window contains 19th-century stained glass with a reused centrepiece depicting The Deposition. The ceilings are made of timber ribbed panels with plaster bosses. The church's fittings, dating from the 19th and 20th centuries, include elegant poppy head benches, a panelled pulpit, and a small Gothic-style font made of salt-glazed stoneware inscribed "St. Mary Mag. Oxon," which stands on a 20th-century base that matches the altar. The church is located in Biscathorpe Park, near the site of a deserted medieval village.
Local climate
Church of St Helen receives an average of 740 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 73% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 73% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 34 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 54% of listed buildings. Of these, 18 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings