Old Church of St Helen, Rudgeway

Summary

The west tower and most of the nave north wall of the medieval parish Church of St Helen, dating from the early 15th century and 12th or 13th centuries respectively, together with the buried remains of the rest of the Norman and later church, which was partially demolished in the 1960s. The standing fabric includes a Norman doorway in the nave wall. The buried remains include the below-ground elements of the church. The archaeological levels will not only contain information illustrating the fabric and history of the church but also artefactual and environmental evidence for the period in which it was constructed.

Reasons for Designation

The standing and buried remains of the old parish Church of St Helen are scheduled, for the following principal reasons:

* Survival: the standing remains, which include the west tower and part of the north nave wall, illustrate several phases of the development of the building, and investigations show that the buried remains survive well, following the phased demolition of the remainder of the building;

* Potential: there is good potential for the buried remains to include evidence of the earliest building on the site, beneath the later phases, as well as environmental and artefactual evidence;

* Documentation: C18, C19 and C20 pictorial records and C21 survey and investigation work all add to our understanding of the church.

History

A parish church is a building, usually of roughly rectangular outline and containing a range of furnishings and fittings appropriate to its use for Christian worship by a secular community, whose members gather in it on Sundays and on the occasion of religious festivals. Children are initiated into the Christian religion at the church's font and the dead are buried in its churchyard. Parish churches were designed for congregational worship and are generally divided into two main parts: the nave, which provides accommodation for the laity, and the chancel, which is the main domain of the priest and contains the principal altar. Either or both parts are sometimes provided with aisles, giving additional accommodation or spaces for additional altars. Most parish churches also possess towers, generally at the west end, but central towers at the crossing of nave and chancel are not uncommon and some churches have a free-standing or irregularly sited tower. Many parish churches also possess transepts at the crossing of chancel and nave, and south or north porches are also common. The main periods of parish church foundation were in the C10 to C11 and the C19. Most medieval churches were rebuilt and modified on a number of occasions, hence the visible fabric of the church will be of several different dates, with, in some cases, little fabric of the first church being still easily visible. Parish churches have always been major features of the landscape and a major focus of life for their parishioners. They provide important insights into medieval and later population levels or economic cycles, religious activity, artistic endeavour and technical achievement. A significant number of surviving examples are identified to be nationally important.

The Old Church of St Helen in Rudgeway was probably begun in the C12, with the earliest documentary sources recording the church’s dedication dating from 1114 (Baddely, see SELECTED SOURCES), though D P Dobson (see SELECTED SOURCES) described and illustrated in 1933 a small window in the south porch, then extant, which might be of Anglo-Saxon origin, indicating an earlier date for the foundation, and there were two further, similar windows to the north elevation which appear from photographs to be of the same period. Some sources disagree on the date of the earliest surviving elements of the structure, with most giving a C13 rather than C12 date, which appears to be supported by the evidence of the fabric. The round-headed north doorway, which is still extant, is enriched with wheat-ear and diaper ornament, and Taylor and Taylor (see SELECTED SOURCES) assert that it is probably Norman rather than Anglo-Saxon.

The church was built in the royal manor of Alveston, which had been held by Harold Godwinson at the Norman Conquest, and was taken into the royal demesne by William the Conqueror, remaining in use as a royal deer park until 1149. The church stands immediately adjacent to the former Alveston Manor house, now Old Church Farm. The present house on the site was constructed in the C16 (probably about 1580, Verey and Brooks, see SELECTED SOURCES) for the Veel family, possibly replacing a medieval house in an unknown location on the site. The house, owned in the early C18 by Edward Hill, was altered in the C17 and C18, and later reduced, becoming a farmhouse by the late C19 (Listed, Grade II). The church is shown in an engraving by Johannes Kip of 1712, for Sir Robert Atkyns’ ‘The Ancient and Present State of Glocestershire’, depicting the view of the manor from the south, showing at that time the tower, nave with south porch, including the putative Anglo-Saxon window above the doorway, and lower, two-bay chancel. The church is further documented in estate plans of 1750 and the early C19, and on the tithe map of 1839, which shows a small addition had been made on the north side, adjacent to the tower. Photographs in the Historic England Archive, of 1960 and some undated from the mid-C20, show the church in its entirety before the larger part was demolished. The church was fully recorded in plans, elevations and sections by architect Sir George Oatley in 1942.

From these sources, it is possible to determine that the chancel was rebuilt in the later C12 or C13, and the west tower constructed in the early C15, probably around 1400, at which time it is likely that parts of the nave were rebuilt, and the south porch added, possibly reusing an earlier, Anglo-Saxon window. Later, in the post-medieval period, a north vestry was added; and the nave was provided with buttresses to arrest the spread of the walls, which were also stabilised with tie rods and pattress plates. The interior of the church included painted schemes of decoration from the C13 to the C17, and a suite of C17 sanctuary fittings. A western gallery was added in the late C18 or early C19.

During the C19, the focus of the settlement shifted from the area around the manor house and church to an area further to the north and east, along the main Bristol to Gloucester road (the modern A38). Alveston had been part of the adjacent parish of Olveston until 1846, when it was created its own parish, with St Helen becoming the parish church. By 1882, the old church of St Helen had gone out of use, to be replaced by a new church with the same dedication within the new village centre. The new church, opened in 1885, houses the Norman font brought from the old church. The old church deteriorated, and from 1962, following the granting of a faculty, its demolition was carried out in phases, beginning with the removal of the roof, with the final phase completed in 1967, leaving just the tower and most of the nave north wall surviving above ground, later subject to some limited consolidation by the Ministry of Works. The roof and doors of the tower were repaired in 2011, the west window was regalzed, and the tower's internal floors reinstated.

The site has not been extensively investigated. In 2011, a resistivity survey of the entire church plot was undertaken. The geophysical survey confirmed the footprint of the church as previously recorded. It was followed by trial trenching outside the scheduled area, which indicated the possible survival of some C19 burial vaults within the churchyard; headstones and monuments were removed to the edge of the churchyard at the time of the church’s demolition, so these are no longer marked on the surface. Romano-British pot sherds found in one of the test pits could indicate that there might have been an earlier structure on the site, possibly related to ritual or worship, but there is at present insufficient evidence to support this hypothesis.

A very limited evaluation took place within the scheduled area in 2012. Two hand-dug test pits were excavated as far as the archaeological horizon, with another just outside the scheduled area, to the north of the site of the chancel, over an anomaly identified in the geophysical survey. About 1m of demolition material was found under topsoil, from which was recovered in the test pit over the site of the south nave wall two blocks of limestone ashlar, each with one surface sealed with whitewash and with red ochre painted decoration, tentatively ascribed to the C18. A block of dressed and moulded limestone with some ochre paint was also recovered. The test pit over the nave floor came down onto a large, broken limestone slab, possibly capping a vault under the nave floor, and indicating that the decorative floor surface had been removed at the time of demolition. The third test pit uncovered a previously unrecorded truncated wall beyond the footprint of the church, of similar character to the walls of the church. The layer of demolition material here, which had been cut through by a C19 land drain, included pot sherds dating from the C11 to about 1700, and a quantity of medieval roof tile. It has been suggested that this wall could be part of a structure built against the north wall of the chancel, and demolished by the C19, enclosing the hagioscope [squint for viewing the Eucharist from outside the church] set low in the north wall of the chancel which was recorded by Oatley, defined by one of the possible Anglo-Saxon window surrounds. However, the investigations have not so far been able to firmly demonstrate the relationship between this wall and the church, or its purpose.

Details

PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS
The monument includes the C15 west tower and most of the C12 or C13 nave north wall of the old parish Church of St Helen, together with the buried remains of the rest of the Norman and later church, partially demolished in the 1960s.

DESCRIPTION
The monument describes the known extent of the church, which comprised west tower, nave, south porch and chancel, orientated north-west to south-east, measuring approximately 28m from the west wall of the tower to the site of the east end of the chancel, and approximately 15m at the widest point of the footprint, from the north wall to the south porch. The boundary has been drawn to follow the footprint of the known extent of the church. The standing remains include the full height of the south-west tower, which appears to date from the early C15; built in limestone in two colours, laid in a rough chequerboard pattern, it rises in three stages to a crenellated parapet, and includes a west window with Decorated tracery dating from about 1300. The upper stages have slit windows, and two-light windows light the former belfry. Attached at the south-eastern corner of the tower is a polygonal stair turret enclosing a stone newel stair. Internally, the lower stage of the tower retains some plain plaster to all four walls. The floors of the tower and shutters to the belfry were reinstated in 2011. The lower part of the nave wall which extends eastwards from the north wall of the tower probably dates from the C12 or C13, and includes a contemporary blocked, round-arched doorway, with diaper moulding and carved imposts. The upper part of the wall appears to date from the C15, indicating a campaign of partial rebuilding which was probably contemporary with the addition of the tower. It also includes a two-light window with pointed arch and trefoil heads, stone quoins, and the remains of a coped gable-end kneeler.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

SG 101

Legacy System:

RSM - OCN

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, Brooks, A, Verey, D, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire II: The Vale And Forest of Dean, (2002), 144-5
Dobson, DP, Anglo-Saxon Buildings and Sculpture in Gloucestershire in Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Vol. 55, (1933), 261-276
Baddely, W StC, Fresh Material Evidence Relating to Norman Gloucester in Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Vol. 41, (1918-19), 97-92
Atkyns, R, The Ancient and Present State of Glocestershire, (1768), 111
Taylor, HM, Taylor, J, Anglo-Saxon Architecture: Volume 2, (1965), 714

Other
Tithe map, 1939
Absolute Archaeology: Results of an Archaeological Test Pit Evaluation on Land Belonging to the Ruin of St Helen’s Church, Rudgeway, South Gloucestershire, BS35 3SQ, March 2013
South Gloucestershire Historic Environment Record 1477
Bristol Record Office DM1812.4.6.20: The Church of St Helen, Alveston, Glos: plans, elevations and sections by Sir George Oatley, 1942
Historic England Archive Red Box Collection: Alveston (photographs)

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.