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St Helen, Colchester

A Norman church, elaborated about a hundred years later. But nothing much happened afterwards. After the Reformation it fell into secular use as a warehouse before being taken over in the early 18th Century by the Quakers for use as a Meeting House. They moved to a purpose-built Meeting House by the Balkerne Gate in the early 19th Century, and this chapel fell into disuse again, before being taken on by the Colchester Deanery of the Diocese of Rochester in the 1880s for use, in those ecclesiologically-minded times, as a chapter house. The east and west windows were inserted by William Butterfield. However, the formation of the Chelmsford Diocese in the early years of the 20th Century made this usage redundant. Since the 1970s, the chapel has served as an Orthodox church, and is open every day. The lower parts of the north and east walls are made up of part of the Roman amphitheatre, and you can see excavated ruins in a house on Mickleburgh Street behind the chapel. Simon Knott, April 2018

 

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home - index - latest - e-mail
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Norfolk churches - Suffolk churches
www.simonknott.co.uk