Benty Grange helmet

The Benty Grange helmet is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the 7th century AD. It was excavated by Thomas Bateman in 1848 from a tumulus at the Benty Grange farm in Monyash in western Derbyshire. The grave had probably been looted by the time of Bateman's excavation, but still contained other high-status objects suggestive of a richly furnished burial, such as the fragmentary remains of a hanging bowl. The helmet is displayed at Sheffield's Weston Park Museum, which purchased it from Bateman's estate in 1893.

The helmet was constructed by covering the outside of an iron framework with plates of horn and the inside with cloth or leather; the organic material has since decayed. The helmet would have provided some protection against weapons, but was also ornate and may have been intended for ceremonial use. It was the first Anglo-Saxon helmet to be discovered, with five others found since: Sutton Hoo (1939), Coppergate (1982), Wollaston (1997), Shorwell (2004) and Staffordshire (2009). The helmet features a unique combination of structural and technical attributes, but contemporaneous parallels exist for its individual characteristics. It is classified as one of the "crested helmets" used in Northern Europe from the 6th to 11th centuries AD.

The most striking feature of the helmet is the boar at its apex; this pagan symbol faces towards a Christian cross on the nasal in a display of syncretism. This is representative of 7th-century England when Christian missionaries were slowly converting Anglo-Saxons away from traditional Germanic paganism. The helmet seems to exhibit a stronger preference toward paganism, with a large boar and a small cross. The cross may have been added for talismanic effect, the help of any god being welcome on the battlefield. The boar atop the crest was likewise associated with protection and suggests a time when boar-crested helmets may have been common, as do the helmet from Wollaston and the Guilden Morden boar. The contemporary epic Beowulf mentions such helmets five times and speaks of the strength of men "when the hefted sword, its hammered edge and gleaming blade slathered in blood, razes the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet".Template:Sfn

Description

Colour photograph of the Benty Grange helmet replica on view at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield

Replica of the Benty Grange helmet at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield

File:BentyGrangeHelmReconstructionSide.jpg

Side view of the replica

The Benty Grange helmet was made by covering an iron frame with horn.Template:Sfn It probably weighed about Template:Cvt, the weight of the Weston Park Museum's 1986 replica.Template:Sfn The framework, which now exists in sixteen corroded fragments, originally consisted of seven iron strips, each between 1 and 2 millimetres thick.Template:Sfn A brow band, Template:Cvt long and Template:Cvt wide, encircled the head.Template:Sfn Two strips of the same width ran from front to back, and from side to side.Template:Sfn The Template:Cvt long nose-to-nape band extended Template:Cvt in the front and Template:Cvt in the back; the extension over the nose was straight, whereas the extension at the back was curved inwards, so as to fit the nape of the wearer.Template:Sfn The lateral band ran from ear to ear; both ends are broken off slightly below the brow band, but it would have extended further as part of a cheek or ear protection.Template:Sfn It was affixed to the outside of the dexter (wearer's right) side of the brow band, the inside of the sinister (wearer's left) side, and the outside of the nose-to-nape band.Template:Sfn The four quadrants created by this configuration were each subdivided by a narrower subsidiary strip of iron, only one of which now survives.Template:Sfn Each subsidiary strip was attached to the outside of the brow band Template:Cvt from the centre of the lateral band.Template:Sfn Here they were Template:Cvt wide, and, while tapering towards a width of Template:Cvt, rose at a 70° angle towards the lateral band, which they overlapped at a 50° angle just beneath the crest.Template:Sfn The inside of the helmet was most likely originally lined with leather or cloth, since decayed.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Eight plates of horn, probably softened and bent and suggested to be from cattle,Template:Refn were cut to fit the eight spaces created by the iron frame.Template:Sfn No horn now survives, but mineralized traces on the iron strips preserve the grain pattern.Template:Sfn The plates were fitted over the iron, thereby hiding it, and abutted at the centre of each strip.Template:Sfn The joins were hidden by further pieces of horn that were cut to the width of the iron strips and placed on top.Template:Sfn The three layers—iron at the bottom, followed by two layers of horn—were held together by a succession of rivets:Template:Sfn iron rivets placed from inside the helmet, and rivets made of, or coated in, silver, with ornamental heads in the shape of a double-headed axe, placed from the outside, Template:Cvt apart.Template:Sfn Traces of horn on the rear extension of the nose-to-nape band, and on the rear brow band, suggest that the material was also used for a neck guard.Template:Sfn These suggest that pieces of horn, extending Template:Cvt from the centre of the brow band to the bottom of the rear nose-to-nape band, would have met each extension of the lateral band at a 5° angle, reaching them Template:Cvt from the centre of the brow band.Template:Sfn

In addition to the aesthetic elements incorporated into the basic construction of the helmet, two features provide added decoration: a cross on the nasal and a boar on the crest.Template:Sfn The silver cross is Template:Cvt long by Template:Cvt wide, and consists of two parts.Template:Sfn A silver strip was added underneath, elongating what was originally an equal-armed cross.Template:Sfn It was placed atop a layer of horn and attached to the helmet with two rivets, one at the intersection of the two arms and one at the bottom.Template:Sfn Around the cross in a zigzag pattern are twenty-nine silver studs, out of a suggested original forty, that were probably tapped into small holes drilled into the horn.Template:Sfn

The most distinctive feature of the Benty Grange helmet is its boar, affixed to the apex of the helmet.Template:Sfn The core of its body is made of two pieces of hollow D-sectioned bronze tubes, their flat sides approximately Template:Cvt apart.Template:Sfn The space between the two halves was filled in with a substance, likely horn or metal, which has now disintegrated; it perhaps projected upwards, forming the mane or spine of the boar,Template:Sfn or, as has been interpreted on the replica, created a recess into which a mane of actual boar bristles could fit.Template:Sfn On either side of the bronze core was affixed a plate of iron, forming the visible exterior of the boar.Template:Sfn Four pear-shaped plates of gilded silver—cut down and filed from Roman silver, as evidenced by a classical leaf design on the reverse of the front left plate, and file marks on the obverse—acted as hips, through which passed two silver rivets, one atop the other, per end.Template:Sfn These rivets held together the five layers of the boar, and were welded to the plates.Template:Sfn Into the body of the boar were placed holes, probably punched, that held circular silver studs approximately Template:Cvt in diameter.Template:Sfn The studs, likely flush with the surface of the body, were filed down and gilded, and may have been intended to represent golden bristles.Template:Sfn Eyes were formed with Template:Cvt long pointed oval garnets set into gold sockets with filigree wire edging.Template:Sfn The sockets were Template:Cvt long by Template:Cvt wide, and had Template:Cvt long shanks, filled with beeswax, sunk into the head.Template:Sfn Individual pieces of gilded bronze seem to have formed the tail, tusks, muzzle, jawline, and ears of the boar, but few traces of them now remain.Template:Sfn Two sets of iron legs—probably solid originally, but rendered hollow by corrosion—attached the body to an elliptical bronze plate; both sets depict front legs, bent forwards without account for the anatomical differences between a boar's fore and hind limbs.Template:Sfn The elliptical plate is Template:Cvt long with a maximum width of Template:Cvt, and matches the curvature of the helmet.Template:Sfn Four holes indicate attachment points for the legs and another three connected the plate to the frame of the helmet, in addition to a large rivet hole slightly behind the centre.Template:Sfn The plate was probably affixed directly to the frame, the legs passing through holes in the horn.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Function

The Benty Grange helmet would have both offered some protection if worn in battle, and indicated its wearer's status.Template:Sfn As the Weston Park replica shows, it would have originally been an impressive object,Template:Sfn and may have been intended for ceremonial use.Template:Sfn Experiments using a mockup of the replica also showed that the helmet would have resisted blows with an axe, which damaged the horn without entirely breaking it.Template:Sfn Arrows and spears pierced the horn, but they also pierced modern fibreglass and safety helmets.Template:Sfn

Helmets were rare in Anglo-Saxon England, and the Benty Grange helmet, both by its richness and its scarcity, signified the high status of its owner.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Such protection certainly seems to have been among the armour of the affluent.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In the contemporary epic Beowulf, a poem about kings and nobles, they are relatively common,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn while the helmeted Vendel and Valsgärde graves from the same period in Sweden, thought to be the burials of wealthy non-royals, suggest that helmets were not solely for the use of the élite.Template:Sfn Yet thousands of furnished Anglo-Saxon graves have been excavated since the start of the 19th century and helmets remain rare;Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn this may partly reflect poor rates of artefact survival or even recognition, but their extreme scarcity indicates that they were never deposited in great numbers.Template:Sfn

Discovery

Location

Green farmland on an overcast day, with a stone wall in the foreground, and somewhat dilapidated stone buildings bordered by trees in the background

Benty Grange Farm, near Monyash in the Derbyshire Dales

The helmet was discovered in a barrow on the Benty Grange farm in Derbyshire,Template:Sfn in what is now the Peak District National Park.Template:Sfn Thomas Bateman, an archaeologist and antiquarian who led the excavation,Template:Refn described Benty Grange as "a high and bleak situation";Template:Sfn its barrow, which still survives, is prominently located by a major Roman road,Template:Sfn now roughly parallel to the A515 in the area,Template:Sfn possibly to display the burial to passing travellers.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The barrow is one of several tumuli in the vicinity, and may have also been designed to share the skyline with two other nearby monuments, Arbor Low stone circle and Gib Hill barrow.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The 7th-century Peak District was a small buffer province between Mercia and Northumbria, occupied, according to the Tribal Hidage, by the Anglo-Saxon Pecsæte.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn The area came under the control of the Mercian kingdom around the 8th century;Template:Sfn the Benty Grange and other rich barrows suggest that the Pecsæte may have had their own dynasty beforehand, but there is no written evidence for this.Template:Sfn

Excavation

Bateman excavated the barrow on 3 May 1848.Template:Sfn Although he did not mention it in his account, he was probably not the first person to dig up the grave.Template:Sfn The fact that the objects were found in two clusters apart, and that other objects that normally accompany a helmet, such as a sword and shield, were absent,Template:Sfn suggests that the grave had previously been looted.Template:Sfn Given the size of the mound, an alternative (or additional) explanation is that it originally contained two burials, only one of which Bateman discovered.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn

Colour image of a Llewellynn Jewitt watercolour depicting the Benty Grange helmet and associated finds

Watercolour by Llewellynn Jewitt depicting the Benty Grange helmet and associated finds

The barrow comprises a circular central mound approximately Template:Cvt in diameter and Template:Cvt high, an encircling fosse about Template:Cvt wide and Template:Cvt deep, and outer penannular earthworks around Template:Cvt wide and Template:Cvt high.Template:Sfn The entire structure measures approximately Template:Cvt.Template:Sfn Bateman suggested a body once lay at its centre, flat against the original surface of the soil;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn what he described as the one remnant, strands of hair, is now thought to be from a cloak of fur, cowhide or something similar.Template:Sfn The recovered objects were found in two clusters.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn One cluster was found in the area of the supposed hair, the other about Template:Cvt to the west.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In the former area Bateman described "a curious assemblage of ornaments", which were difficult to remove successfully from the hardened earth.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn This included a cup identified as leather but probably of wood,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn approximately Template:Cvt in diameter at the mouth.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Its rim was edged with silver,Template:Sfn while its surface was "decorated by four wheel-shaped ornaments and two crosses of thin silver, affixed by pins of the same metal, clenched inside".Template:Sfn Also found were the remnants of three hanging bowl escutcheons,Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn as well as "a knot of very fine wire", and some "thin bone variously ornamented with lozenges &c."Template:Sfn attached to silk, but that soon decayed when exposed to air.Template:Sfn

Approximately Template:Cvt to the west of the other objects was found a jumbled mass of ironwork.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Separated, this mass included a collection of chainwork, a six-pronged piece of iron resembling a hayfork, and the helmet.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn As Bateman described it:

Bateman closed his 1849 account of the excavation by noting the "particularly corrosive nature of the soil",Template:Sfn which by 1861 he said "has generally been the case in tumuli in Derbyshire".Template:Sfn He suggested that this was the result of "a mixing or tempering with some corrosive liquid; the result of which is the presence of thin ochrey veins in the earth, and the decomposition of nearly the whole of the human remains."Template:Sfn Bateman's friend Llewellynn Jewitt, an artist and antiquarian who frequently accompanied Bateman on excavations,Template:Sfn painted four watercolours of the finds, parts of which were included in Bateman's 1849 account.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn This was more than Jewitt produced for any other of their excavations, a mark of the importance that they assigned to the Benty Grange barrow.Template:Sfn

The helmet entered Bateman's extensive collection, where it attracted interest.Template:Sfn On 27 October 1848 he reported his discoveries, including the helmet, cup, and hanging bowl, at a meeting of the British Archaeological Association,Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn and in 1855 it was catalogued along with other objects from the Benty Grange barrow.Template:Sfn In 1861 Bateman died at age 39,Template:Sfn and in 1876 his son, Thomas W. Bateman, loaned the objects to Sheffield.Template:Sfn They were displayed at the Weston Park Museum through 1893, at which time the museum purchased objects, including the helmet, from the family; other pieces were dispersed elsewhere.Template:Sfn since 2024Template:Dated maintenance category (articles), the helmet remains in the collection of the museum.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn From 8 November 1991 to 8 March 1992 it joined the Coppergate helmet at the British Museum for The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600–900.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The Benty Grange barrow was designated a scheduled monument on 23 October 1970.Template:Sfn The list entry notes that "[a]lthough the centre of Benty Grange [barrow] has been partially disturbed by excavation, the monument is otherwise undisturbed and retains significant archaeological remains."Template:Sfn It goes on to note that further excavation would yield new information.Template:Sfn The surrounding fields were designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 2013, and see agricultural use.Template:Sfn The nearby farmhouse was renovated between 2012 and 2014;Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn as of 2023 is used as a holiday cottage.Template:Sfn

Conservation

In 1948, the helmet was brought to the British Museum to undergo cleaning and study.Template:Sfn Permission to carry out the work had been requested the previous year,Template:Sfn when Rupert Bruce-Mitford, recently returned from World War II service in the Royal Signals to an assistant keepership at the museum,Template:Sfn spent time in Sheffield examining the Benty Grange grave goods.Template:Sfn A 1940 letter from T. D. Kendrick to Bruce-Mitford's army camp had assigned him his position, and responsibility for the Sutton Hoo discoveries—"Brace yourself for the task", the letter concluded.Template:Sfn Upon his return, he therefore took to studying the comparison material; his work in 1947 included the excavation of the Valsgärde 11 boat-grave in Sweden alongside Sune Lindqvist,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn and the trip to Sheffield, intended to shed light on the Sutton Hoo helmet through comparison with the only other Anglo-Saxon helmet then known.Template:Sfn Permission was obtained from the curator and trustees of the Weston Park Museum for the proposed work, and, by February 1948—when, shortly before the centennial of its excavation, Bruce-Mitford exhibited it to the Society of Antiquaries of London—the Benty Grange helmet was brought to London.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Work at the British Museum was overseen by keeper of the research laboratory Harold Plenderleith, who in some cases, particularly with the boar, did the work himself; additional input was provided by Bruce-Mitford, the technical attaché and authority on ancient metalwork Herbert Maryon, and the archaeologist and art historian Françoise Henry.Template:Sfn In the hundred years following its exposure to the air the helmet had continued to corrode, and certain parts had become indiscernible.Template:Sfn The boar was unrecognizable, and the silver rivets and cross were almost completely obscured.Template:Sfn A strong needle was used to pick off the encrustation, revealing the underlying features.Template:Sfn During this process, the boar, hitherto thought solid, snapped in two.Template:Sfn Bruce-Mitford termed this occurrence "fortunate", for it revealed the boar's inner structure.Template:Sfn Frederic Charles Fraser examined the remnants of horn at the Natural History Museum, and conducted experiments softening and shaping modern horn.Template:Sfn

Typology

The Benty Grange helmet is dated to the first half of the 7th century AD, on the basis of its technical construction and decorative style.Template:Sfn It is one of six Anglo-Saxon helmets, joined by the subsequent discoveries from Sutton Hoo, York, Wollaston, Shorwell, and Staffordshire.Template:Sfn These are all, other than the Frankish Shorwell helmet,Template:Sfn examples of the "crested helmets" known in Northern Europe in the 6th through 11th centuries AD.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Such helmets are characterized by prominent crests and rounded caps, traits shared by the Benty Grange example,Template:Sfn and other than a Viking Age fragment found in Kiev, uniformly originate from England or Scandinavia; contemporary continental helmets were primarily spangenhelm or lamellenhelm.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The ultimate form of the helmet is unparalleled among surviving Anglo-Saxon and crested helmets, although individual characteristics are shared.Template:Sfn While other Anglo-Saxon helmets were typically formed with wide perpendicular bands and four infill plates,Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn their Swedish counterparts from Vendel and Valsgärde display similar use of thin iron frameworks.Template:Sfn The complicated construction of the Benty Grange boar, which combines garnet, filigree, gold, silver, iron, and bronze, is unique across ornamental Anglo-Saxon objects,Template:Sfn but the general boar-crest is paralleled by the Wollaston and Guilden Morden boars.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn One other helmet exhibits the use of horn, but it is the spangenhelm-type helmet of a high-status child, discovered in Cologne.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Iconography

File:BentyGrangeHelmBoarCrest.jpg

Close-up of the boar crest

The helmet was made during the nascent days of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, and exhibits both Christian and pagan motifs.Template:Sfn The boar invoked a pagan traditionTemplate:Sfn and the cross a Christian belief.

Roman Britain had been officially converted to Christianity in the 4th century, although Celtic paganism remained strong. In the 5th century Ireland was converted by British missionaries and in 563 Irish missionaries based in the monastery of Iona off the western coast of Scotland embarked on the conversion of the Picts. Christianity almost disappeared in southern Britain after its conquest by the pagan Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries, apart from the surviving Celtic areas of southwest England and Wales. In 597 Pope Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian mission to Kent to embark on the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. It rapidly converted kingdoms as far north as Northumbria, but initial success was often followed by a period of apostasy and in several cases the final conversion was carried out by Irish missionaries from Iona. It is not known whether the Pecsæte were converted by adherents of the Roman or Irish Celtic tradition.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The Benty Grange helmet was made during this time of change, as evidenced by its syncretic display.Template:Sfn It emphasises the pagan element, a large boar dominating a small cross.Template:Sfn The cross may not necessarily be an indication of Christian belief; it may have instead been chosen for its amuletic effect.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Whatever the politics behind religious conversion, the battlefield was not a place to discriminate against gods.Template:Sfn

The boar

Colour photograph of a Central European boar

A Central European boar

The boar had symbolic import in prehistoric Europe, where, according to the archaeologist Jennifer Foster, it was "venerated, eulogised, hunted and eaten ... for millennia, until its virtual extinction in recent historical time."Template:Sfn Anglo-Saxon boar symbols follow a thousand years of similar iconography, coming after La Tène examples in the 4th century BC, Gaulish specimens three centuries later, and Roman boars in the 4th century AD.Template:Sfn They likely represent a fused tradition of European and Mediterranean cultures.Template:Sfn The boar is said to have been sacred to a mother goddess figure among linguistically Celtic communities in Iron Age Europe,Template:Sfn while the Roman historian Tacitus, writing around the 1st century AD, suggested that the Baltic Aesti wore boar symbols in battle to invoke her protection.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Boar-crested helmets are depicted on the turn-of-the-millennium Gundestrup cauldron, discovered in Denmark, and on a Torslunda plate from Sweden, made 500 years later.Template:Sfn The Romans also included the boar as one of their many symbols—four legions,Template:Sfn including the twentieth,Template:Sfn adopted it as their emblem.Template:Sfn The boar persisted in continental Germanic tradition during the nearly 400 years of Roman rule in Britain, such as in association with the Scandinavian gods FreyjaTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn and Freyr.Template:Sfn Its return to prominence in the Anglo-Saxon period, as represented by the boars from Benty Grange, Wollaston, Guilden Morden, and Horncastle, may therefore suggest the post-Roman reintroduction of a Germanic tradition from Europe, rather than the continuation of a tradition in Britain through 400 years of Roman rule.Template:Sfn Whatever its precise symbolism, the Anglo-Saxon boar appears to have been associated with protection; the Beowulf poet makes this clear, writing that boar symbols on helmets kept watch over the warriors wearing them.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Boar-crests in Beowulf

Colour photograph of the Sutton Hoo helmet, which has boar images on each of its two eyebrows

The Sutton Hoo helmet exhibits the other style of boar motif mentioned in Beowulf.

The Benty Grange helmet recalls the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, in which boar-adorned helmets are mentioned five times.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Three passagesTemplate:Sfn appear to describe examples that, like the Benty Grange helmet, are topped with a freestanding boar.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Refn After Æschere is killed by Grendel's mother, King Hrothgar's lamentation speaks of such helmets. Template:Verse translation The devastation wrought by Grendel's mother itself invokes a boar-crested helmet, for "[h]er onslaught was less only by as much as an amazon warrior's strength is less than an armed man's when the hefted sword, its hammered edge and gleaming blade slathered in blood, razed the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet"Template:Sfn (Template:Sfn) These two passages likely refer to boar-crests like those found on the Benty Grange and Wollaston helmets,Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn and the detached Guilden Morden boar.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Bibliography

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