On 5 July 2009, Terry Herbert was looking forward to a perfect summer’s day and a few quiet hours of metal detecting. Hebert had previously asked for – and been granted – permission by Fred Johnson, the landowner, to explore the field. Located on a hill next to the busy A5 road, it was a location he had driven past many times before. Initial detector readings revealed an 18th century penny, then later in the day a potential brass fitting. So far, nothing unusual. Until he looked closer and saw what looked like gold. Within a few moments, several more readings registered. Emerging from the topsoil and glinting in the sunshine were numerous unusually shaped gold objects. To Herbert’s astonishment, he had discovered an unknown hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver in a farmer’s field in Staffordshire.
Herbert duly reported the find, a legal requirement in England, to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. An archaeological investigation was promptly organised, with the increased activity on the farmer’s field clearly visible from the A5. The hoard was vulnerable. To guard against theft, passersby and journalists were told that “no Roman pottery has been found yet” – a partial truth to protect the hoard.
Once the hoard objects had been recovered from the field, the find was legally listed as ‘treasure’ and valued at £3.285 million. The hoard became headline news and was quickly named ‘The Staffordshire Hoard’. Funding commenced to compensate Herbert and Johnson, and in September 2009, Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT) and The Potteries Museum (TPM) jointly acquired the Hoard. The location of the Hoard beside the A5 was, in the 7th century (archaeologists’ date of its burial), the Roman road of Watling Street. The area was border territory, a meeting point of Anglo-Saxon and British cultures at a time of religious transition between Pagan and Christian beliefs, and the area became part of the Kingdom of Mercia. The Hoard remains the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold (4kg) and silver (1.7kg) ever discovered.
The Staffordshire Hoard contains more than 4,000 artefacts. The items it contains – including military fittings for swords, two Christian crosses and saddle furnishings – were quickly recognised and catalogued. However, there remained 2,600 unidentified broken and twisted fragments, multiple thin sheets forcefully torn apart, strips of gold, hundreds of rivets and larger curved structures that might suggest the rim of a pot or possibly a vessel, a ceremonial drinking cup or even a crown. It was difficult to envisage what the fragments represented or their purpose.
Helmet fabrication trials © School of Jewellery
Revealing Secrets
Over several months, Chris Fern and George Speake – both Anglo-Saxon iconographic specialists – reviewed each fragment, interpreting the embossed patterns to piece together incomplete jigsaw panels of gold. The Hoard began to slowly give up its secrets and reveal narrative images of priests, marching and kneeling warriors, cavalry figures and zoomorphic (animal-like forms that cannot be identified) designs. The archaeologists were cautiously confident in the evidence: a panel with military and religious designs, and a quantity of precious metal which hinted at a single large item of prestige and purpose. These elements indicated an exceptionally rare 7th century Anglo-Saxon Warrior King’s Helmet – an incredible discovery.
For both museums, this was an amazing development, but also a conundrum for conservation, accessibility and engagement. The fragments were fragile and, in line with conservation protocols, had to remain in their found condition. Their damage was integral to the Hoard’s story. Although the fragments presented a glimpse of what the helmet might have been, it was difficult to fully convey the significance and impact of the helmet through the fragments alone. For the museums, the issue became how best to materialise the helmet, whilst at the same time protecting the Hoard’s fragments.
The Power of Partnerships
Birmingham Museums Trust and The Potteries Museum reached out to the School of Jewellery in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. The institutions had previously collaborated on two heritage projects, an exhibition about Matthew Boulton (inventor, engineer and silversmith, 1728-1809) in 2009, and on a recreation of the Staffordshire Hoard’s Christian Cross, which was presented to Pope Benedict in 2010 from the people of Birmingham.
A reconstruction of the Hoard Helmet would address many of the museums’ concerns. The opportunity to reconstruct the helmet and create a life-sized wearable interpretation, informed by the original helmet fragments, captured the whole team’s imagination. It was the largest and most complex recreation the school had undertaken.
Cheek 3D print © School of Jewellery
Traditional Meets Digital
The school has a reputation for combining traditional fine metalwork and digital craft skills with material understanding – and for bespoke approaches to unique commissions. The museums’ brief was to translate the archaeologists’ research findings into a tangible and readable single object, capturing a moment in time when the helmet first left the smith’s workshop, in pristine condition. Recreating the complex three-dimensional metal jigsaw puzzle of the helmet required a collaborative team of specialist crafts people and specific skills: jewellers, silversmiths, die sinkers, stampers, engravers, platers, laser scanners, computer aided design (CAD), computer numerical controlled (CNC) and three dimensional print experts, and polishers. All were willing to share and apply their knowledge to materialise the helmet.
BMT basement Staff Hoard Fragments: © Birmingham Museums Trust
This article will discuss the reconstruction process for two significant components: the narrative panels and the cheek pieces. These were the most complex and challenging components and their analysis provided an insight into the journey of the contemporary crafts people, as the team brought the helmet to life.
Using the fragments as reference points, as well as the archaeologists’ findings, work began to capture the components and craftmanship features on the narrative panels and cheek pieces. The narrative panels were produced using six different processes, each of which required workshop trials, adjustments and a degree of head scratching!
Stamping Dies: © School of Jewellery
The processes and stages included laser scanning. This provided information on the thickness of the metal shim (0.1mm), the depth of the embossing and the overall size of the fragment, as well as reference points for the CAD files. The files created virtual stamping dies and data to plot the CNC for machining the high-density modelling board, for the male and female stamping dies. The dies were finished with hand engraving to ease (remove material) the vertical walls of the dies with a fine tolerance to allow the stamping dies to emboss but not cut the metal – a process whereby “it is not what you remove that’s important but what you leave behind”.
Budget constraints meant high-carat gold shim was substituted with copper shim, which is not as malleable as gold. This meant several annealing and restamping stages were required to reach the desired depth and detail. The panels received a gold-plated finish and a final polish.
Cheek Detail © Society of Antiquaries of London
Forward March
One interesting observation on the crested warrior panels is the direction of their march. The row of panels on the helmet are positioned around the circumference above the brow, thus the warriors could be seen as marching round and round the head!
However, there are two sets of warrior panels, one with warriors marching to their right and another with warriors marching to their left. The warriors start marching from the back of the head in opposite directions and meet at the forehead as they march forward into battle, suggesting a strong intent and conviction towards the original craftsmen’s iconography and beliefs.
The cheek pieces were the least damaged items. Laser scans captured the detailed carved surface and provided the basis of the CAD files. Broken tabs and wire work were virtually augmented to create stereolithography files for 3D printing as a sacrificial pattern for casting in bronze. The actual cheek pieces were gold with lines of silver detail. To emulate the bi-metal finish, the bronze casting was entirely silver-plated, then sections of the silver plate were masked off with nail varnish and plated in gold. When the nail varnish was removed, the bi-metal finish was revealed.
Reconstruction of Fabrication of Iron and Leather Components
The Hoard is a collection of precious metal fragments – there is no evidence of the iron or leather substructures of the helmet cap. This led one of the experts to comment that the work was like “trying to build a house when only the wallpaper survives”.
The project team reached out to blacksmiths and leather workers to create the foundations of an iron and leather cap upon which the components could be attached. The placement of the panels was informed by the archaeologists’ findings, with panels set in rows around the cap with a hierarchy of iconography representing Anglo-Saxon warrior society.
The uppermost panels represent priests and cavalry. The next layer reveals bird-crested marching warriors, followed by zoomorphic quadpods and then kneeling warriors. Each panel is held in place by a reeded (carved lines in the surface) strip, with rivets passed through the leather. The aforementioned curved structure that suggested the rim of a vessel became the fixture for a crest of horsehair dye in madder root (organic red dye), aligned from the forehead to the back of the head.
A New Appreciation
The recreation of the helmet has prompted a reassessment of the 7th century technologies in terms of the level of craft skills, the metallurgical understanding of precious metals, the innovation in tools, the trading routes and even the belief systems of the time. In undertaking the reconstruction and experiencing first-hand the types of craft processes involved in making the original helmet, both the archaeologists and crafts people have a new appreciation of 7th century smiths; namely to not underestimate their achievements considering the tools and knowledge they had.
The legal ownership of the Hoard is shared between Birmingham Museums Trust and The Potteries Museum. There is only one Hoard, but due to the reconstruction project, there are now two helmets, one for each museum, which were simultaneously revealed on 3 November 2018. Mark Routledge (known as Gally Bagger) is the leather worker who created the internal leather cap and re-enactor, an appropriate model as he sits comfortably wearing the helmet with the knowledge his master craftsmanship along with the skills of other crafts people are now part of the helmet’s story. This image has become the iconic image of the Staffordshire Hoard.
Mark Routledge modelling Helmet: © Birmingham Museums Trust.
Project Acknowledgement:
The Helmet replica project was funded by Birmingham Museums Trust and The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, and is based on a major research project funded by Historic England and the museums. The full results of the research project are published by the Society of Antiquaries and the Archaeology Data Service.
The helmet replica project team includes Birmingham Museums Trust, The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham City University School of Jewellery, Drakon Heritage and Conservation, Gallybagger, Royal Oak Armoury and jeweller Samantha Chilton. George Speake and Chris Fern, specialists on the main research project.
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