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| The south elevation of St. Helen's church |
The Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Campsall, with its complex construction history and its extensive in situ and reset Romanesque sculpture, is one of the most interesting that I have visited since I first began my investigation of mediaeval churches in Treeton back in February 2016.
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| The lychgate |
Having been dropped off at the lychgate of the Grade I Listed St. Helen’s church in Burghwallis by Chris Ellis, the organiser of Church Explorers Week, I entered the churchyard and went to look for Colin the churchwarden, who was doing some gardening.
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| Saxon Churches in South Yorkshire |
After introducing myself, I left him to finish off the work he was doing and went to have a very quick look at the exterior of the church, which is one of seven described by Peter Ryder in Saxon Churches in South Yorkshire and is best known for its extensive herringbone masonry.
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| The south elevation of the nave and the porch |
Historic England (HE) dates the church as “C10-C11 and C12 with C14-C16 alterations; restored 1864 and 1883” and, standing back to take a general record photograph of its south elevation, I could clearly see distinct variations in the patterns and colours of the masonry in the tower, porch, nave and chancel – including a considerable proportion of red sandstone.
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| A close up view of the south elevation of the nave |
Moving closer, the nave and the west end of the chancel is built mainly with herringbone masonry that comprises thin bedded limestone from the Brotherton Formation, with red sandstone sporadically used in the herringbone stonework, as normally bedded courses and for quoins.
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| The geology around Burghwallis |
A couple of blocks of massive squared yellowish limestone from the Cadeby Formation, which outcrops a short distance away to the north-west, have been used in walling in the east end of the nave, for most of the quoins to the east end of the nave, the dressings of the 3-light Perpendicular Gothic style square headed window and as large ashlar blocks in the porch, which HE date to the late C14 or early C15.
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| The porch |
The renewed C13 lancet window is made of massive limestone that has a buff/pink colour and is quite unlike the cream coloured or yellowish dolomitic limestone from the Cadeby Formation, but I did not examine it closely with my hand lens or test it with hydrochloric acid, which would confirm that it might be Jurassic oolitic limestone – as I have often seen used to restore the dressings of mediaeval churches built with dolomitic limestone in Doncaster.
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| The base of the wall to the nave |
Red sandstone has been used for the base of the wall of the nave and the plain square plinth and, although the latter is in places buried beneath the turf, it apparently continues into the west end of the chancel to a buttress that hides the joint in the masonry, which Ryder considers to certainly be pre-Conquest or overlap date to the west and of the late C14 to early C15 extension to the east.
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| The floor plan of St. Helen's church |
The west end of the chancel is composed of both herringbone and squared and coursed and masonry and Ryder refers to three of the red sandstone blocks as being shaped to the re-entrant angle of the east wall of the nave.
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| The re-entrant angle of the nave and chancel |
The central section of the chancel wall is also built with herringbone masonry, with coursed and squared stonework beneath the eaves, but the windows are in the C14 Decorated Gothic style and have had much of the tracery replaced.
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| The central section of the south wall of the chancel |
The extended east end of the chancel is built with well squared and coursed limestone, with an occasional use of red sandstone and very large quoins. The east window is also in the Decorated Gothic style with identical tracery, but it is shorter and it has been completely replaced during one of the C19 restorations of the church - the first of which in 1864 was supervised by John Loughborough Pearson, according to the account by the local historian Margaret Burns.
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| The east end of the south elevation of the chancel |
