HELPSTONE, a village and a parish in Peterborough district, Northamptonshire. The village stands adjacent to the Syston and Peterborough railway, 2½ miles from the boundary with Lincolnshire, and 4 SSW of MarketDeeping; and has a station with telegraph on the railway, a post office under Market-Deeping, and a fine early English stone cross. The parish comprises 1,860 acres. Real property, £3, 372; of which £43 are in quarries. Pop., 763. Houses, 148. The property is divided among a few. The manor belongs to Sir John Trollope, Bart. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough. Value, £108. Patron, the Hon. George W. Fitzwilliam. The church is of various dates, from Norman downward; has an early Norman tower, surmounted by an octagonal decorated English tower and spire; had once a chantry; was partially restored in 1862 and in 1865; and contains three sedilia, an octagonal font, and a piscina. During the restoration of it there were found an ancient stone coffin, many Norman and early English sepulchral slabs, very many early mediæval glazed flooring tiles, and some fragments of Roman flue tiles. There are an Independent chapel, a free Methodist chapel of 1863, and a national school with £40 a year from endowment.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))