More about St Helen's Church Ipswich  . . .

St Helen's Church with its Victorian spire, was rebuilt on the site of its medieval predecessor between 1830 and 1870. The 15th century porch of the former church was retained. Parts of the original Church date back to Norman origin from the 11th or 12th Centuries. 

The Church was added to the United Benefice in late 1999.

St. Helen's was one of the ancient churches of Ipswich to be built outside the mediaeval town walls, and so it was situated in what was one of the suburbs, serving the people who lived around the road to Woodbridge. Very little remains of the mediaeval church, but from what few pictures and documentary evidence exist, it is possible to get some idea of what the building was like before it was altered so drastically in the 1800s. 

It was a small and humble structure, which had few of the airs and graces of the more magnificent Ipswich churches, but yet was a building of considerable interest, character and antiquity.

The square western tower was reckoned to be the smallest of all the Ipswich towers, being 44 feet high and 15 feet square externally.  There were no buttresses - only stone quoins - at its corners, and on the south side, at the level of the ringing chamber, was a small blocked window, which was clearly of Norman origin, dating from the 11th or 12th centuries. The belfry stage had double 14th century windows, and the tower was capped by an embattled parapet.

The short nave (about 32 feet by 23 feet), which had a shallowly-pitched lead roof, was lit on the south side by the two (now restored) southern windows which we see today Clearly the earlier nave had been much altered in the 15th century, when this pair of large triple windows were inserted and it received its base-course of flint and stone flush-work, To the south of the nave was the present 15th century porch, now rather weathered and battered but still a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, with its fine doorway and canopied niche above it. In the 1600's or 1700s the sundial was added to its southern gable. It appears that the former north doorway also had a fine 15th century arch, with roses set in its inner mouldings.

The picture of St. Helen's in Ogilby's Map of Ipswich of 1674 and Isaac Johnson's picture in the early 1800s, show a chancel with a tiled roof, which had a steeper pitch than the nave roof and was slightly higher. The south chancel wall had a pair of square-headed windows, also a priest's doorway, and David Elisha Davy's comment (1811) that its walls were of brick, probably indicates that it was a Tudor chancel of the late 1400s or early 1500s. It measured 24 feet 6 inches by 20 feet 10 inches. (Page 1)

When Davy visited St. Helen's in 1811, the interior was equipped with box-pews, which he described as "neat" and painted white. In one of these enclosures on the north side of the nave stood the font - not one of our splendid mediaeval fonts, but made of brick, which had been plastered over. On the walls hung two hatchments to the Canning and Phillipson families. The pulpit was made of carved oak and was probably one of the 17th century pulpits which still grace so many of our Suffolk churches. Two more hatchments (for the Parish family) faced each other across the chancel. At the east end, raised upon one step, stood the Communion Table, within its three-sided rails and on the east wall above it were wooden compartments, inscribed with the Lord's Prayer, Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments... 

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DRAWINGS OF ST HELEN'S 1674 - 1957 -  CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE