A visitor to Kilnsea might well dismiss St. Helen's as a rather unassuming mid-Victorian brick-built church with little appeal. However, there is plenty of interest if you know where to look. Although it is the first church on that site, it is the successor of a medieval church, which toppled over the cliff into the sea in the early nineteenth century. Within the 'new' St. Helen's are several relics of that earlier church, and fragments of the first St. Helen's are built into the fabric of  the present one. So perhaps the story should begin with the earlier church.

The earlier St. Helen's
There was a church at Kilnsea by the beginning of the twelfth century. Little is known about its fabric, but the building that still stood in the old village of Kilnsea in the early nineteenth century was certainly medieval in origin. At the time that it was erected the church was in the centre of a village which was probably about half a mile from the sea. A drawing in George Poulson's History of the Seigniory of Holderness (published 1840) shows that St. Helen's was stone-built and had a nave flanked by aisles as well as a chancel, a clerestory, and a three-storey tower. The chancel was built with stone from a limestone quarry, near Roche Abbey, on the border of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, a few miles south-east of Rotherham.
 In 1766 the church was recorded as being 95 yards from the sea. By the early nineteenth century, owing to the action of the sea on the soft boulder clay of Holderness, St. Helen's found itself, in company with many other buildings in Kilnsea, teetering on the edge of the cliff. The churchwardens carried on using the building until the very last moment. A report in the Hull Advertiser of 1826 stated that, when in 1824 the chancel fell over the cliff, a wall was built at the east end of the remaining part of the church so that services could still be held inside. However, a year or so later, another large landslide took the partition, with the north wall, its pillars, pointed arches, pulpit, the reading desk and books, down the cliff 'with a tremendous crash'. Presumably the churchwardens must have been taken by surprise, since they did not remove such valuable objects. The south wall of the church, a solitary window, and the ruins on the western side, continued to stand 'in a threatening state', but soon they too succumbed. The tower remained for only a year or two, before finally falling over the cliff in 1831.
Around the church in the graveyard lay generations of parishioners, and untold numbers of mariners, who had been washed up on the beaches of Kilnsea and Spurn over the centuries. As the cliff crumbled, the contents of the graveyard became shockingly exposed. George Head, a visitor to the area in 1835, was walking back from Spurn towards Kilnsea, when he noticed a skull on the beach. Distressed by the sight, he hastened into the village to tell someone of his find, only to learn that 'human bones at the village of Kilnsea were as coals to Newcastle'. He was taken to look on the shore just below the village, where he saw:-

These distressing sights were of more than passing concern to the inhabitants of Kilnsea. Many of the bodies were those of their relations or friends. Apparently some people attempted to collect the remains for re-burial at Easington. One old man, called Medforth, placed his father's bones in a granary, and when his sister died, asked the vicar if he could bury them with her body. The vicar asked for double fees, to which Medforth retorted that he would not pay twice, his father already having been buried once. The father's bones were surreptitiously placed in the coffin by the undertaker. As George Head discovered, many of the graveyard's occupants were strangers to Kilnsea. The burial register for a twenty-year period, 1790-1810, shows that 32 people were buried in Kilnsea churchyard in those years, of whom no less than 15 were ship-wrecked mariners. It was recorded that the last person to be buried in the old churchyard was 'a negro from a ship called the Armenius, wrecked in 1823'.
Various parts of the church were rescued as it crumbled and fell. Stones from the chancel were stored with a view to their being used in a future church. The font was taken to a garden in Skeffling, where it remained for many years. A large holy water stoup and two sanctuary chairs were preserved, and eventually found their way to the Crown and Anchor (built in the early 1850s). Portions of stone pillars, lintels, and so on, were removed to gardens in Kilnsea and Easington. And it seems very likely that the dressed stones, used in the cobble walls of outbuildings of nearby Cliff Farm, and as the corner stones of Warren Cottage on Spurn peninsula, originated from the old church. In the garden of Ivy House, Hedon, the home of James Iveson, an avid collector of antiquities, are some remains of Kilnsea church, though they are difficult to identify, being intermixed with material that Iveson had collected from other churches. Despite the efforts of people to save the stone, much must have been lost to the sea. Even in this century, at very low tides, people recorded having seen the foundations of the church. However, since the church toppled over the cliff, rather than being submerged by the sea, such visible remains could only have been fragments.
The cottages and farmhouses of old Kilnsea were also falling into the sea. In the 1830s the land was still being cultivated under the age-old open-field system, which meant that no new houses could be built on the land outside the village nucleus. In 1843 the decision was made to enclose the land, and re-allocate the farmers' strips in compact holdings. Thus houses could be built away from the sea, and gradually a new, somewhat smaller village was created, mainly on the Humber side of the parish. However there was no rush to build a new church. After the church went over the cliff, services continued to be held at Kilnsea. As a temporary measure, a room in a farmhouse was rented, and the rescued church bell was hung in the stackyard, being struck with a stone to call people to worship. Eventually the bell cracked from such harsh treatment, which rather quashes romantic fables about Kilnsea's bells ringing under the sea! For weddings, baptisms and burials, the people of Kilnsea had to go to Easington.

St. Helen's reborn
John Ombler, of Westmere House, who became the Board of Trade superintendent of the Spurn beach and sea-defence works, was apparently the last person to be baptized in the old St. Helen's. and it was to a large extent due to his efforts that in 1864 the decision was made to build a new church at Kilnsea. When he died in 1895, at the age of 84, a plaque was placed in the present church to record his services as a churchwarden for 35 years. The Diocesan Society contributed £102 to the building of the church, and subscriptions were also raised locally. The architect, W. Burges, designed a building of red and yellow brick, which was erected about three-quarters of a mile west of the former site. Superficially the new church, which cost £500, bore no resemblance to the old, but Burges, with a proper respect for tradition, used stones from that church for the foundations, the buttresses, and the coping. Furnishings and fittings from the old St. Helen's soon began to find their way back. The medieval font was rescued from Skeffling, the holy water stoup from the Crown and Anchor (both are still in the church), the church registers were brought back from Easington, and services resumed on a regular basis.
 St. Helen's continued to serve the parish for 130 years. Congregations were never large. The establishment of military camps at Kilnsea and Spurn in the twentieth century did not draw many new worshippers since the army had its own chapel. Visitors to the caravan park, established in the 1960s, did not often attend services. By the early 1990s, the congregations for the once-monthly services had dwindled into single figures, and it was obvious that the church must close. On 20 June 1993 the last regular service took place, since when St. Helen's has only been opened for weddings and a christening. The future is uncertain, though it is hoped that the building may yet find a use*.
 The graveyard will remain open. It is still tended and is an attractive feature of Kilnsea, especially in the spring, when it becomes carpeted in snowdrops, daffodils, primroses and bluebells. In the north-west corner stand two graves inscribed —A Sailor of the Great War, 21st February 1916. In nearby Kew Villa, a path near the west end of the house is made up of old gravestones. One, with its inscribed face upwards, is of the eighteenth century and certainly comes from the old graveyard of St. Helen's.

* It was bought soon after this article was written and is now being converted into a private dwelling. The external appearance will be preserved.