St. Helen’s Well, approximately 3 miles WNW of Tadcaster, is marked on older OS 1:25000 maps at Grid Ref. SE 452 458, a point now immediately south of Thorp Arch Trading Estate and on the north bank of the river Wharfe. At this place there are a few springs and a little stream running S alongside the agger, or embankment, of a Roman road which crossed the Wharfe by a ford immediately to the S; the Roman road was that between Lagentium (Castleford) and Isurium (Aldborough), that is, not the road to York. The road and ford seem to have continued in use, with a chapel built to serve medieval travellers.

‘St Helen’ is incorporated in several place-names on modern maps, and Healaugh church until recently used the dedication ‘St Helen and St John the Baptist’, and before that to St Helen alone (Raine 1873). The nearest churches are Thorp Arch, one mile; Wighill one and a half miles, and Healaugh, three miles. The course of the Roman road is often called Rudgate because of the reddish soil which forms on the Magesian limestone, and the use of this 'raddle' in plaster.

There are no remains of the chapel but the site is included because it was the find-spot of a carved shaft, now in the church at East Marton, some 35 miles to the E. A full description of the find, with photographs, will be found in that site report.

John Leland records a journey westwards from Tadcaster on the south bank of the river Wharfe: ‘Wateling Streete… crossith over Warfe at a place called S. Helenesford, a mile and a half above Tadcaster: and on the other ripe [bank] is S. Helenes Chapelle’ (Smith 1964, I, 44). By his time (mid-16thc) there were stone bridges at Tadcaster, Boston Spa and Wetherby.

There can be no doubt that the portion of sculptured shaft now at East Marton W of Skipton is the piece illustrated by T. D. Whitaker in the early 19^th century (2nd edn., 1812, plate facing p. 185; 3rd edition 1878, pl. between pp. 94 and 95). The caption to the engraving in both editions mistakenly states the find-spot as ‘St Helen’s Hill’, but the text is clear, describing this spring and others dedicated to St Helen; the use of ‘Hill’ is a misreading of ‘Well’ by the engraver.

Whitaker (1812, 184-5; 1878, 239-40) says that the chapel Leland noted is ‘now’ dilapidated and gone, ‘but the following discovery will prove it to have been a place of devotion in Saxon times. At a small distance from the ford, and close to the route of the Riggate [Rudgate], the branch of the great Roman road to York, are a few hillocks covered with furze and interspersed with trees, from the South [east?] end of one of which, within a small natural arch of rock, overhung with brushwood and ivy, rises St Hellen’s Well which spreads over a gravelly bottom. The waters are soft and very clear… Adjoining are two smaller springs, also esteemed sacred; and the waters of all three soon uniting, run Eastward [southward] along a deep and narrow gill [to the Wharfe]. Opposite to St Helen’s well, and hid among the brushwood, was lately discovered the shaft of a cross lying on the ground. It was of the early Saxon form, obeliscal, with two broad and two narrow sides, all of which had a crude carving in relievo of a kind of foliage’.

At the time of the engraving in Whitaker 1812, which was dated 1808 by the engraver, the shaft was in a garden at Boston Spa. It passed through the hands of a number of gentry families, was seen by W. G. Collingwood at Gledstone Hall, West Marton (1915, 176-8), and is now in St Peter’s church, East Marton, W of Skipton (see separate site report).