The Church of St Helen,

Kilnsea Kilnsea is a hamlet in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, in an area known as Holderness. It is situated approximately south of the village of Easington, on the north bank of the Humber Estuary. The hamlet forms part of the civil parish ...

Holderness Holderness is an area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, on the north-east coast of England. An area of rich agricultural land, Holderness was marshland until it was drained in the Middle Ages. Topographically, Holderness has more in common wit ...

East Riding of Yorkshire The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire to t ...

, England, is a redundant parish church dating from 1864–5. It was designed by the architect

William Burges William Burges (; 2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoc ...

, and partly paid for by his father

Alfred Burges Alfred Burges (1796–1886) was a British civil engineer. He was apprenticed to the civil engineer James Walker, and in turn trained several other engineers including Sir Joseph Bazalgette. Walker and Burges were responsible for railways, bri ...

, and is a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

History

The hamlet of Kilnsea lies in the parish of Easington, almost at the tip of

Spurn Head Spurn is a narrow sand tidal island located off the tip of the coast of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England that reaches into the North Sea and forms the north bank of the mouth of the Humber Estuary. It was a spit with a semi-permanent co ...

, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The hamlet has always been prone to sea erosion and the original church of St Helen fell into the sea in 1826-31. Some thirty years later, on 22 April 1865, the ''Yorkshire Gazette'' recorded; "the great liberality of Mr. A. Burgess C.E., of Blackheath, who having occasionally passed (Kilnsea) on his professional visits to Spurn Point and struck with the poverty of the place, having heard that an effort was being made for building a church, most kindly offered plans free of all expense, and gave £150 towards its completion".

Pevsner Pevsner or Pevzner is a Jewish surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Aihud Pevsner (1925–2018), American physicist * Antoine Pevsner (1886–1962), Russian sculptor, brother of Naum Gabo * David Pevsner, American actor, singer, da ...

notes that the plans were drawn up by Alfred Burges's two sons, "one of whom was the architect William Burges". The purpose of Alfred Burges's "professional visits" to Spurn Point is unclear, but his partner in the engineering firm of ''Messrs. Walker and Burgess'', James Walker, was Chief Engineer for

Trinity House "Three In One" , formation = , founding_location = Deptford, London, England , status = Royal Charter corporation and registered charity , purpose = Maintenance of lighthouses, buoys and beacons , he ...

, the body with responsibility, then and now, for lighthouse construction in Great Britain. In the 1850s, Trinity House funded the construction of a new lighthouse at Spurn Point, the Low Lighthouse. The total cost of the new church was £420. The church was declared redundant in 1993 due to falling congregations, the last service being held on 20 June of that year. It was subsequently sold, with the intention of conversion to a private house.

Architecture and description

The church is simple and small, comprising a

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and

bellcote A bellcote, bell-cote or bell-cot is a small framework and shelter for one or more bells. Bellcotes are most common in church architecture but are also seen on institutions such as schools. The bellcote may be carried on brackets projecting from ...

. It is constructed of red and yellow brick and incorporates some material from the earlier church. These included the original

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

, returned from nearby Skeffling. A tablet, commemorating two men from the village who were killed in the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, was removed when the church was decommissioned and is now located at All Saints', Easington. Graves of two unknown merchant seamen also killed in the war are located in the graveyard. Relatively unknown, the church is not recorded in the

gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographical index or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or co ...

of Burges's known buildings compiled by the architectural historian

J. Mordaunt Crook Joseph Mordaunt Crook, (born 27 February 1937), generally known as J. Mordaunt Crook, is an English architectural historian and specialist on the Georgian and Victorian periods. He is an authority on the life and work of the Victorian architec ...

, and included as Appendix B in his study of Burges, ''William Burges and the High Victorian Dream''. It is noted by David Neave in his revised

''Yorkshire: York and the East Riding'' and was listed as a

Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building on 14 December 2018.

Footnotes

References

Sources

* * * {{William Burges William Burges church buildings Grade II listed churches in the East Riding of Yorkshire Holderness Redundant churches