A church has existed on this site since 1235 and included a churchyard which was sold to allow the creation of St Helen’s Square with the graves being moved to a small plot nearby on Davygate. So many corpses had been buried in the churchyard that a large mound had begun to accumulate making it difficult for carriages to pass by. The current façade was built in 1875 by William Atkinson a member of one of the most prolific family of York architects of the 18th and 19th centuries.