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One of the oldest churches in Ashfield, founded in 1150.

This is a Grade II* Listed Building select this link for full architectural description

Many early churches were built on what had previously been pagan sites, and in the St. Helen's churchyard there is a monolith of the type found in Derbyshire stone circles.

This suggests that the site had earlier been a pagan one, and that a Christian church had existed on the site before the present building (i.e. from Anglo-Saxon times).

During the conversion of pagan Anglo-Saxon England it was church practice not to pull down pagan sites, but to consecrate them with Holy water and raise shrines to Christian Saints within them. This can be seen in a letter of instruction to Bishop Mellitus in 610 C.E., who was on his way to support St Augustines mission at Canterbury.

Although standing stones (such as the one here) and stone circles are generally dated to the Bronze Age (2500-1000 B.C.E.), it is quite probable that they had been appropriated by the much later Anglo-Saxons for their ceremonies.

The churchyard also houses the grave of a Gypsy King, Dan Boswell, who lived from 1737 to 1827.

It is said that Travellers used to travel from far and wide to lay new-born babies on his grave, for luck.

The gravestone is a comparatively new one; the original was described in 1906 as being broken and only partly legible, with no verse inscribed upon it. The church burial registar records that Daniel Boswell was actually buried on 2nd March 1827 at age 76, not 90 as the stone claims.

The Boswell clan were a large extended family of Travellers, and in old Nottinghamshire dialect the word bos'll was used as a term for Travellers and Roma in general. Some eight years after Daniel died, another Boswell first name Louis, died at Bestwood. Louis Boswell was buried in Eastwood church and in the burial register there he is described as a 'Traveller' aged 42 with a marginal note 'This man known as the king of the Gypsies was interred in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators'.

The Travelling folk frequently used nearby Selston Common as a stopover.

Inside the church are a number of interesting features including a stone slab incised with the figure of a priest in Eucharistic vestment. There is no other incised figure of a priest as old as this in England.

The rear of the church. The standing stone can be seen on the edge of the grass in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph

Who was St. Helen?

The rear of the church. The standing stone can be seen on the edge of the grass in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph

Known outside England as St Helena, born 248 CE in Bythinia (NW Asia Minor) she became the first wife of Constantius Chlorus and bore him a child who became Constantine the Great. She became a Christian through the influence of her son, and went on to perform great works of charity, spending the rest of her life in the East and in Rome.

She helped in the building of several Roman basilicas and, in her old age, she visited the Holy Land where her name is associated with the erection of churches on sites connected with the life of Jesus.

Her name is chiefly associated with her discovery of the 'True Cross' in a rock-cistern near Mount Calvary.

Geoffrey of Monmouth records the legend that she was of Celtic origin and the daughter of King Coel of Colchester ('Old King Cole'). It is partly because of this legend that so many British churches are dedicated to her.

Another View of the church