Nether Poppleton is a village on the NW outskirts of York. (Note: Nether and Upper Poppleton are now one compact built-up area). The church is in a rural location at the edge of the village and is near the river Ouse. It is a twin-cell building with N vestry added to chancel, and a west and north gallery in the nave. Plain walls but with ancient complexity hinted at in various blocked arches in the chancel; enlivened by modern craftwork throughout. Twelfth-century remains are the chancel arch and perhaps the blocked arches in the chancel N and S walls, which are suggested by Pevsner to be the remains of a Norman crossing (1967, 374). There is also a reset corbel in the west wall of the nave.

An Anglo-Saxon monastic community was here, led by Everilda (Everild, Everildis, Averil) who died c.700. All we know of her comes from the York breviary. The community of which she was abbess grew to about 80 before she died. She had settled on land owned by St. Wilfrid at a spot called “the Bishop’s Farm”. This is usually said to be Everildsham, now Everingham (YE), but Ekwall gives as the derivation of that placename ‘the ham of Eofor’s people’. Buttery gives reasons for thinking Nether Poppleton was rather the site for the bishop’s farm.

Domesday Book does not explicitly mention a church here, but VCH 1912, 281 quotes ‘Ode the deacon had 2½ carucates for geld. There is land for many ploughs. This was the land of St. Elurilda.’ Land was held by the Archbishop and Osbern de Arches.

Restoration minimal, Arts and Crafts. For drawing of 1831, complete with ?18^th c. tower, see Buttery (1982), 38.

The capital seen in section in the exterior view of the south arch, right side, is bulbous and round, rather like those in 11^th c. Canterbury illuminations, eg. ‘City of God’ and ‘Father of Monks’ drawings. (see G. Zarnecki, The Monastic Achievement, figs. 2, 3, 12).

The reset corbel might be compared to those in the porch at Drax.

Note: Edition of Bulmer consulted was incomplete.