Hello all,

I just purchased a sugarloaf styled helmet and have no idea how to line it in a historically acurate fassion. All my other gear has been viking aged, and I just threw something togeather. I would really like to do this one right. Any comments or pics would be greatly appreciated!

Paul Greathouse

Here is an available one for DIY or send your helm to them and they can put it in for you. ( get in touch with them first before sending ).

http://www.merctailor.com/catalog/product_inf...ucts_id=91

I've installed a couple of these and it's not too difficult but a little awkward peening the rivets inside the helm bowl i.e. a little cramped to get your hands and hammer in there ( small hammer helps ), and you have to match your drill holes to the liner holes placement.

I used some making tape around the outside of the helm so that the top edge of the tape was at the same height all around the helm and then use a marker to put a dot at the right place and used a center punch before drilling the holes.

In any case if you buy this liner from Allan just e-mail him or telephone for detailed instruction or advice about any questions you might have installing it properly. ( Allan has been know to give this kind of advice even to people not buying from him or doing it all from scratch as a DIY project .... he really is that nice a guy. :D ).

Historically we have little evidence how early helmets like this had liners.

For all we know they could have had integral padded liners. We know from several pictures of helmets that just cover the skull that chin straps were at times present. A few pictures in the MAC bible show men holding helmets with them.

So here are some choices.

Rivet or sewn in liner to helmet. If sewn you should do two holes somewhat close to each other or more.

You could make a padded liner or use a leather or canvas liner that is unpadded with a padded arming cap or hood. Liners can be anything from a pull on copy of the inside of the helmet to simple triangles or even several long fingers. As far as I know we have no liners till later in the 14th century.

For a sugarloaf I'd do a leather canvas liner and wear a padded cap/hood and mail coif as we have little evidence for aventails attached to a helmet until the end of the 2nd quarter of the 14th century.

In the end though as I said to start, we are dealing with a period where the evidence is spotty.

I know some people have glued padded liners in as well. I have not had good results with this method but maybe someone who has can chime in.

RPM

Holkham bible, appoximatly 2nd quarter of the 14th century has a few images of what appears to be helmet padding. See the guy with the crown falling off the horse middle of the far right side in image.
http://img4.rajce.idnes.cz/d0403/3/3232/32322...B_040r.jpg

You could call at least some of these helmets sugarloaf and the padding appears to be as Randall describes triangles of padded cloth sewn together. If memory serves, there are some other images from the Holkham bible that show guys in armour standing around without helmets on but with these pads sitting on top of their heads. Which made me wonder if the padding was some how attached (sewn) to the mail coif and not stuffed in the helmet?

aside: One other neat thing about this image is that the other guy with a crown in the imaged is wearing what appears to plate gauntlets. One of the earliest examples of plate gauntlets that I can think of.

few more pics
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/holkham-bible/158/
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/holkham-bible/159/
http://manuscriptminiatures.com/holkham-bible/164/

This is very interesting as I've often wondered what these really looked like.
We can see that 19th century helmet liners were often fastened inside the helmet, and how modern workers and firemen helmets often have a spider or cross strap type suspension and these seem to be quite serviceable at least for straight down impact from falling objects, but the only type I've managed to find that are recovered from medieval times is separate padded coifs similar to a heavily gamboised open face ski mask for use in jousting.

I'd love for these to be the helmet paddding missing link. But are there any museum objects at all similar to what we see in the images? What's depicted in these could also be lamellar segment or fluted under helmets.

If they're the padding we look for, how were they fastened to the top of the head? If it came down further at the sides and back, more like a proper coif with a chin tie, they would fit the skull much better and wouldn't slide around possibly blocking vision in a critical moment, but these just seems to be stuck there on top of the head when the helmet falls off, defying gravity. Perhaps lacing on the inside sticks it to the maille coif? Or double sided tape... ;)

Another way to explain it is with a lamellar or fluted under helmet physically connected to the maille coif. There are lots of suriving head armour in museums around the world, especially from eastern europe and islamic culture that look rather similar. There could most certainly be hidden padding under such helmets, but then we still can't see what it looks like.

Johan,

True. I had always assumed all these images to show a close fit helmet. That said there is nothing that definitively indicates it could not be padding. We have padding and liners starting from the 14th on. In fact when I was working at the Castle Museum a number of our 16th and 17th century helmets had their original liners.

Mackenzie,

Good point. I had always assumed it was something else but it certainly could be some form of padded cap/liner or the likes.

Earliest imagine of gauntlets is from the last decade of the 13th. By 1300-1310 there are a few MS with gauntlets like the Queen Mary Psalter from England, dated to the first decade of the 14th.

RPM

I never even thought that it might have been some kind of skull cap, mostly because when I made a simple padded liner it for a cheap "Norman" helmet I own look very much like the item.

As for keeping it on, a couple of quick whip stitches through the mail would let it defy gravity and make it quick and easy to replace when it was too nasty to wear. Stitching it to the maile would also solve the problem of padding sliding around, which I have experienced with "My Little Norman".

Such an item might exist in collections, it would be easy to mis-classify. Although I doubted that if it existed that any would have survived as it is my impression that fabric armour that old is rather rare in the physical record and as fabric armour goes it a sweaty, dirty, rusty padded dolly of uncertain usage is not a very sexy martial item.

mackenzie

Well everybody,

Thank you so much for your imput! I think I am going to go the padding-attached-to-coif route, as I have an extra one laying around. This has become a vastly more interesting thread than I thought it would. Anyone else have any interesting tidbits about the inside of helmets?