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Summary

A Greek-type bronze helmet supposed to have been found in Baldock in 1880

Monument Types

• FINDSPOT? (?, Earlier Iron Age to Middle Iron Age - 800 BC to 101 BC)

Associated Finds

• HELMET (Unknown date)

Full description

A Greek type bronze helmet is said to have been found at Baldock in 1880 <1>.
Only a photograph appears to survive. This photograph was shown to the Society of Antiquaries in November 1911 by William Page; it was 'of a bronze helmet of Greek type said to have been found at Baldock in 1880, which had had its crown broken by a blunt instrument. As the edges were patinated like the rest, the fracture was evidently of ancient date. It would at once be suggested that the helmet had been brought to England by a modern collector, but in view of the foreign products exhibited from Welwyn, it was not impossible that Greek bronzes had reached Britain at a still earlier date. According to Sir Arthur Evans the helmet was four centuries earlier than the Welwyn series' <1>.
The Welwyn finds used as comparison are 1st century BC Italian bronze vessels [158], exhibited to the Antiquaries on the same day. Unless more information, or the object itself, comes to light it still appears more likely that the helmet was 'brought to England by a modern collector'.
North Herts Museums archives has a reference to the helmet having come from a quarry in Baldock, and 'a note, handwritten in the 1980s, suggests that the quarry may have been the same as that located on the eastern side of the Stationmaster's House site' on the south side of Baldock Station <3>: see [486]. But the find was apparently made in a quarry pit open in 1880, not a late Roman chalk pit, and there was no quarry here in the later 19th century <3, 4>.

OS Records (Index). SHT8223.

<1> Procs Soc Antiquaries 24 (1911-12), 5, Exhibits at ballots (Article in serial). SHT9003.

<2> Ashworth, Helen, 2012, Baldock railway station, Station Road, Baldock, Herts: archaeological assessment, RNO 3233, p3 (Report). SHT7844.

<3> OS 25 inch map, 1st edition, 1880 (Cartographic material). SHT8116.

<4> OS 25 inch map, 2nd edition (1897-1901), 1898 (Cartographic material). SHT8113.

Sources and further reading

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