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Object type: Building stone
Measurements: H. 14 cm (5.5 in); W. 23 cm (8 in); D. 28 cm (11 in)
Stone type: Medium-grained orange sandstone
Plate numbers in printed volume: Pl. 97.522
Corpus volume reference: Vol 1 p. 114
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The stone is a normal building block with one very smoothly dressed face which is inscribed in Anglo-Saxon capitals. It reads:
HELMGYT
This would most plausibly be a proper name; the two separate elements are found in Anglo-Saxon personal names. However Helm- is a more common masculine element, and -gyt, -gyd, or -gyth a feminine one. The name Gythhelm appears in the list of priests in the Northumbrian Liber Vitae of the church of Lindisfarne/Durham (Sweet 1885, 157), so that it is possibly a masculine name. A feminine name carved on a wall of a domestic building would be odd in an establishment that has provided no other evidence of female activity.
