Church Of Saint Helen

The Church of Saint Helen is a Grade I listed building located on the north side of Northallerton Road in Ainderby Steeple. It dates from the 14th century, with restorations and additions from the 15th and 19th centuries. The structure is built from coursed, squared stone and ashlar, topped with graduated slate and lead roofs.

The church features a west tower, an aisled nave with a clerestory, a south porch, and a chancel with a north vestry. The three-stage tower, which is from the 15th century, is flanked by aisles and has diagonal offset buttresses at the west end. It includes a three-light cusped arched west window with a hood-mould, small cusped one-light openings above each aisle, and clock faces on the west and south sides. Each face of the tower has a two-light arched cusped belfry window with a hood-mould, and it is topped with an embattled parapet.

The nave consists of three bays with four-bay aisles, featuring a plinth and offset buttresses. The 15th-century gabled porch has a pointed-arch doorway with a board door and an inner pointed tunnel vault with transverse ribs. The nave contains three two-light cusped Y-tracery windows with hood-moulds, and above is a stone band with a plain parapet. The clerestory has three flat-arched two-light windows with hood-moulds and moulded coping.

The north aisle has offset buttresses and three two-light cusped ogee-headed windows, along with a similar one-light opening in the second bay. The chancel is lower and has three bays, with a plinth and offset buttresses. The outer bays feature 19th-century Decorated-style two-light pointed-arched cusped windows with hood-moulds, while the central bay has a pointed-arched priest's doorway with a board door and hood-mould. The chancel has a plain parapet with stone coping and a 19th-century east window of five cusped lights with Decorated-style tracery and a hood-mould, along with a small offset buttress below it. The gabled north vestry is from the 19th century.

Inside, the church features 14th-century three-bay arcades, with the south arcade having octagonal piers adorned with a nailhead motif and pointed arches, while the north arcade has octagonal piers with round abaci. The chancel arch mirrors the design of the south arcade. The chancel includes canopied decorated sedilia, a small decorated piscina, and canopied niches flanking the east window. A carved octagonal font from 1662 is present, and benches near the west end of the nave have small panels of Jacobean decoration.