St Helen’s Church, West Keal

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Tue, 09/12/2025 - 00:00

St Helen’s Church at West Keal sits to the south of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Mainly from the fourteenth-century, but with the usual assortment of re-building, renovation and redecoration, What struck me as most remarkable was the number of cared figures about the place, both in the porch and almost every pillar within. Some appear to be monsters and demons (or the occasional dinosaur), which surely struck terror in the superstitious or young.

These are mixed in with carvings of actual people, replete with fourteenth-century dress. These might have been patrons of the church, or local characters whom the craftsmen wished to parody. Not as threatening and lethal as the demons and monsters, we might think. Yet those of us who have experience of running churches know that people, fallen people, can pose as much danger to the local congregation as unclean spirits. Where as sometimes the two unite, working in some kind of horrid harmony, much of the time, I think Satan’s henchmen can sit back and merely watch self-centred humans under a pretence of piety, do their work for them.

Do we build up the body of Christ, or pull it down? Do we sow seeds, or trample the shoots? Do we tend and water, or neglect and destroy? Around any Bible-believing, gospel-preaching church, the spiteful spirits watch; pray to God that humans do not aid them or be their unwitting agents.