St Helens Church is a Grade II listed building in the Lewes local planning authority area, England. First listed on 12 January 2001. Church.
St Helens Church
- WRENN ID
- heavy-steeple-candle
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Lewes
- Constituency
- East Grinstead and Uckfield MP: Mims Davies (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 12 January 2001
- Type
- Church
- Address
- St Helens Church, Banks Road, Chailey
- OS grid reference
- TQ 393 221
- Coordinates
- 50.98195, -0.01622
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
St Helens Church is a church built in 1931 by L Kier Hett as a chapel for the Chailey Heritage, known for its treatment of "crippled children." It is designed in the late Arts and Crafts style and constructed from local Sussex bricks, featuring a tiled course supplied by Messrs H and E Waters of Forest Row. The building has a timber frame with a weatherboarded tower and a tiled roof.
The church consists of a three-bay nave with aisles, an apsidal-ended chancel, and a west tower. The main structure is primarily brown brick laid in stretcher bond. The west front features a central weatherboarded square tower with two stages, a hipped pantiled roof, and a ground floor hipped roof supported by two wooden posts that form a porch. It has double doors and two leaded light windows. The north and south elevations have projecting hipped ends with three hipped dormers and three leaded light windows. The apsidal-ended chancel includes a tall round-headed east window.
Inside, the nave is designed as a three-bay aisled timber barn with a crownpost roof and curved tension to the upright posts, which rest on stone bases. The original joinery includes carved pews at the east end (designed for children often in wheelchairs), doors with ribbed carving, an octagonal carved oak pulpit on a stone base, and oak communion rails. The church also features original stained glass windows, including a Virgin and Child in the east window and representations of the elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) in the side windows.
Local climate
St Helens Church receives an average of 780 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 61% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 68% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 30 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 64% of listed buildings. Of these, 13 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.
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