Historical Helmets

Historical Helmets. Perhaps no piece of armour underwent as many changes from Rome to the Renaissance, as the helmet. The helmet or helm was developed to keep up with advances in weaponry of the times. Our store offers a huge variety of historical helmets for you to choose. Our helmet section has early Roman Helmets and Greek helmets. Including Centurion Helmets, Roman Trooper Helmets and Gladiator helms. The Viking and Norman helmet section contains Spangenhelm type helmets, which were usually worn over a mail hood or with an attached mail aventail (neck guard). These type of medieval helmets often had a front nasal, cheek guard and the Viking helmets sometimes had spectacles.

The Medieval Helmet probably went through the most changes of any type of historical helmet. Early Medieval Helmets were an upgraded form of the Norman Helmet in which they started adding a full fixed visor to replace the nasal. These medieval helms, especially the Crusader Helmet, began to flatten out on top and the sides and backs extended to form the Great Helm or barrel helmet. The top of the great helm became rounder to protect from sword blows and became the Bascinet helmet. Visors became movable and went from the flat Klappvisier to the elongated pig face bascinet of the 14th century. During the 15th century we saw helmets such as the open-faced sallet helm, the T Face Barbuta, and the Sallet helm. The medieval Sallet Helm came in a variety of fixed and movable visors with fixed or articulated tails. The final form of the medieval helmet was the armet which developed into the early Renaissance Close helm. These helmets became known as the typical Knights Helmet.

During the Renaissance, weapons advanced more rapidly and as the sword became obsolete, visors faded away for better vision, such as the Comb Morion helmet and open faced Burgonet Helmets. During the later periods, the helmet became more of a symbolic head dress than protective gear. With the onset of the world wars, the helmet once more found its way onto the battlefield and took on the shapes of the earlier medieval sallet helms.

All the historical helmets in this section (with exception of the decorative helmets) can be worn, and many are functional battle ready helmets. Many of our helmets can be made to your measurements and steel thickness needs, to meet your re-enactment group requirements. As with our other armour, these helmets can be used for display with the addition of one of our wooden helmet stands.