The Helm

By Kate Pratt

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When Malcolm Burgess [to find out more about Malcolm you will have to obtain a printed copy of Local History Bulletin No.6!] was a child in Bishop Wilton in the 1930s the hunt boxes or stables in front of the Village Hall were referred to by his family as “the old hellum”, though he didn’t know why.

Research suggests that this term for a building comes from the Old English word healm which is related to haulm, meaning the long stems of peas, beans, grass or straw used for thatching. In Danish dialect hjelm is ‘a kind of barn’, and is one of the words that came over with the Vikings. So it is possible that this dialect term goes back to a time when these buildings were thatched!