St. Helen’s Church in Burghwallis II

 

The east end of St. Helen's church

Continuing my brief look at the exterior of St. Helen's church in Burghwallis, the east end of the south chancel wall is built with squared and coursed blocks that are obviously very different to the west end of the south chancel wall. It has very large well formed quoins made of yellowish limestone from the Cadeby Formation, which has been used for the well squared and coursed masonry on the east end of the chancel. 

 

The east end of the chancel

 

I didn't notice this at the time, as I was just taking a few general photos while waiting for Colin the churchwarden to finish his work but, in Saxon Churches in South Yorkshire, Peter Ryder draws attention to disturbance and patterns of the masonry beneath the east window that suggests that this is actually an insertion of a window into earlier masonry. 

 

The east wall of the chancel

He goes on to explain that drawings from the 1883 restoration show that the nave and chancel roofs were raised and their pitch steepened and, to maintain the proportions of the east end of the chancel, the window was dismantled and reset at a higher level. Looking closely at my photos, variations in the patterns and jointing of stonework can be clearly seen, which includes the used of red sandstone in the gable end. 

 

The east end of the north wall of the chancel

Moving round to the north elevation, the east end of the chancel is built with a mixture of rubble and roughly squared and coursed red sandstone and dolomitic limestone walling, which contains several large well square yellowish blocks of limestone. It also contains a small oculus window with a square surround made of dark red/purple sandstone, which has been reset with its former inner face to the exterior and Ryder describes as a pre-Conquest form. 

 

The vestry door

 

The north vestry, which Historic England (HE) describe as C19, has a doorway that is surrounded by very precisely squared limestone ashlar that mostly still retains very sharp profiles an except for a few large blocks to the jambs, which show advanced deteriotation and some of which have been recently replaced.

 

The vestry

In contrast, the east wall of the vestry is built with a mixture of yellowish limestone blocks with a good proportion of red sandstone blocks, which are quite well squared and coursed but are highly weathered and they would not look out of place in the eastern extension to the chancel. 

 

The north elevation of the vestry

On the north elevation of the porch, the masonry is much more regularly squared and coursed, but there is the same mix of weathered yellowish limestone and red sandstone, with well formed quoins, and may well be the C19 reuse of old stonework. HE describes the window as dating to the C15/C16, which has been reused; however, the ripple marks, which also apparent to a lesser degree in the restored windows of the nave and chancel on the south elevation, suggest to my eye that the stone used could be Ancaster limestone, which was often used by Victorian architects for their restorations. 

 

The north elevation of the nave

The lowest section of the north elevation of the nave is built with herringbone masonry, but the stonework above consists entirely of limestone rubble walling, which contains no red sandstone and is unlike any of the walling seen in the south walls of the nave and chancel. Ryder considers this to be a rebuilt part of the wall and the blocked doorway, which is partly obscured by a buttress, may relate to this but no date is assigned to it. 

 

The west end of the north wall of the nave

 

The C19 window is identical to those on the south wall of the chancel which, according to Ryder, replaced broad simple arched windows that had no tracery and, although he makes no reference to the architects involved in the 1864 and 1883 restorations, the local historian Margaret Burns says that the earlier restoration was supervised by John Loughborough Pearson – a Gothic Revival architect that was often criciticised by SPAB (The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings) for not respecting the mediaeval fabric of many churches that he worked on. 

 

The first stage of the north elevation of the tower

Continuing to the tower, I noted that this is built with thinly bedded limestone from the Brotherton Formation, which also includes a significant amount of substantial blocks of red sandstone and an oculus window identical to the one seen at the east end of the chancel. 

 

The upper stages of the west elevation of the tower

Before I had the time to take a close look at the tower, which HE describes as C13, the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture of Britain and Ireland refers to as Norman and Ryder considers to have pre-Conquest and Early English Gothic features, Colin arrived to show me around the interior.

 

The belfry stage of the tower