Helfs Hof

Description

Helfs Hof in Sevinghausen, Wattenscheid, now serves as a local history museum and illustrates the architectural and social history of rural farmsteads in the region.

The farmstead lies south of Wattenscheid’s town centre near the Wattenscheider Hellweg. The holding probably took its name from the historic Hellweg, a medieval trade and military road whose former course ran immediately past the property.

The farm was traditionally a Leibgewinngut: the tenant held an inheritable right of use and was the personal owner of the buildings. From the 15th century there was an affiliation with the nearby Pilgrimhaus, to which rent payments were made until the commutation of feudal obligations in 1813. Additional levies were also due, such as the so-called “Galgenzehnt,” from which, among other things, a meal for the executioner was financed.

The main house in its present form dates from the 17th to 18th centuries. As a longitudinal-planked, four-post timber-framed building it retains the original paved threshing floor (Tenne), a historic kitchen with an open hearth and a good parlour (“Upkammer”) on the upper floor. A two-part kitchen door dated 1555 has been preserved; the barrel-vaulted cellar can be visited. Attached to the main building is a residential wing added around 1900; the former cowshed dates from the 19th century. Two original timber-framed barns were later demolished.

In 1968 the city of Wattenscheid acquired the farm; through a local initiative it was converted into a museum and opened on 18 December 1974. Since 2003 it has been operated under cooperative sponsorship; the building has been listed as a historic monument (object A 571) in the monument register of the city of Bochum since 2003.

The permanent exhibition displays agricultural utensils from several centuries as well as exhibits on the history of Wattenscheid. In front of the museum stand two historic steel bells that were previously used in the Evangelical Friedenskirche of Wattenscheid (1880–1953) and survived a fire in the church tower’s roof structure in 1953; they were acquired in 1956, later donated to a Heimatgemeinde in Hellenthal, and are now on display again in Wattenscheid. The Pilgrim Chapel St. Bartholomäus and the church Herz Jesu are located in the immediate vicinity. Address: Helfs Hof, In den Höfen 37, Bochum-Wattenscheid.