THE CHURCH OF ST. HELENS, DARLEY DALE. 1 3 



The church, which is dedicated to St. Helen, underwent 

 much restoration in 1854. It consists of nave with side aisles, 

 south porch, north and south transepts, chancel with north 

 vestry, and tower at the west end. Of the church that pro- 

 bably stood here for several centuries in the Saxon era, and 

 which was extant when the Domesday Survey was compiled, 

 there is apparently nothing now left standing. Nor is there 

 much remaining of Norman work. There is a blocked up 

 doorway of quite plain Norman style in the south wall of the 

 chancel, with a simple hood-mould or dripstone over it, circa 

 1 100. This entrance cannot have been used for the last five 

 centuries, as a fourteenth century buttress hides one of the 

 jambs. It also seems, from the masonry now within this door- 

 way, as though a window with a semi-circular head had been 

 inserted here after the entrance had lost its original use, but 

 this also is now filled up. A doorway of somewhat similar 

 description, but smaller, opens from the north side of the 

 chancel into the small old vestry or sacristy. This sacristy, 

 though much rebuilt and repaired at later dates, is coeval 

 with the doorway, as is shown by the small Norman light in 

 the east wall. A north chancel doorway is, we believe, 

 unknown, save when it led into an adjunct. Any remains of 

 a vestry to a parish church of so early a date is highly excep- 

 tional. All the paint and plaster were cleared away from this 

 north doorway in 1885, and its early character is now made 

 more apparent. There was another built-up doorway in the 

 outer wall of the north aisle of the nave previous to the 1854 

 " restoration " ; it is said to have been Norman. In the masonry 

 of the south wall of the chancel may be noticed the reversed 

 capital of a small Norman shaft, which probably formed part 

 of the jamb mouldings of the chief entrance to the church in 

 the eleventh or twelfth century. 



The church appears to have undergone a thorough renova- 

 tion when the Early English style was in vogue, about the 

 end of the twelfth century. There are two lancet windows of 

 this date in the east wall of the south transept, one of them 



