Saint
Helen's Own Chapel
An empress's mother, said to have laid these stones herself.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Small medieval chapel in the Dutch Quarter
- Legend from
- Medieval Colchester
- Tone
- Curious
In Colchester's Dutch Quarter stands a tiny chapel the town once said St Helen built with her own hands.
Colchester claimed St Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine and the finder of the True Cross, as its own daughter. In the town's legend she was the child of King Coel and married the Roman Constantius, and Constantine was born in Colchester. There was a St Helen's chapel in the town by the early 12th century, and by the late 14th century people said she had built it with her own hands. She sat enthroned on the 13th-century borough seal, and the town arms still show a green jagged cross with three nails and three crowns. These probably refer to her finding of the cross and the bodies of the Magi.