MOST people will be familiar with the Good Friday commemorating Jesus Christ's crucifixion.

The day is a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary.

This is shortly followed by Easter Sunday, commemorating the resurrection of Jesus, described in the New Testament, as having occurred on the third day of his burial following his crucifixion.

However, what may be less known is the belief that a fragment of the True Cross upon which Jesus was put to death lies in a church in the heart of the town at Holy Cross & St Helen Church on Corporation Street.

How did the 'True Cross fragment' arrive in St Helens?

The story of how the True Cross fragment is believed to have come to the town relates to St Helen (more commonly known as St Helena), whom St Helens is named after.

READ > High street businesses team up ahead of Easter event

St Helen, who was mother of Constantine the Great, is a central figure in the history of Christianity.

The origin of the name of the town St Helens stretches back to a chapel which is dedicated to St Helen (Elyn), the earliest reference to which is in 1552.

It is believed St Helen travelled to the Holy Land in the year 327 AD and managed to find the True Cross upon which Jesus was crucified. 

The Cross was then divided into fragments which were transported across the globe.

And one of these fragments materialised at Holy Cross & St Helen Church, on Corporation Street in the town centre.

According to an excerpt in the book St Helens: The Great and the Good by Brian Leyland: "Nobody is quite sure how it got there, although there is a suggestion that it might have been brought by a local woman, Mary Stapleton, who travelled to Rome in 1862 and apparently procured from the Pope some religious mementoes to mark the opening of the Holy Cross Church and these included a relic of the True Cross."

Holy Cross Church had been founded by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1860. Fr Thomas Seed, the head of the Jesuits in Britain, who also founded Sacred Heart Church in Edinburgh laid the foundation stone of the church on May 3, 1860, what was then Feast of the Finding of the True Cross.

The book adds: "Interestingly however the Jesuit archives in London contain an official certificate confirming that the relic in St Helens is authentic which is dated December 1852, some 10 years earlier." 

While some do question the authenticity of the fragment, whatever the truth, it is undoubtedly a fascinating slice of local history connecting the town with humanity's Greatest Story Ever Told.