The Benty Grange helmet is an Anglo-Saxon boar-crested helmet from the seventh 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 Benty Grange helmet, on a modern transparent support
Replica of the Benty Grange helmet at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield
Benty Grange Farm, near Monyash in the Derbyshire Dales
Germanic boar helmets or boar crested helmets are attested in archaeological finds from England, Denmark and Sweden, dating to Vendel and Anglo-Saxon periods, and Old English and Old Norse written sources. They consist of helmets decorated with either a boar crest or other boar imagery that was believed to offer protection in battle to the wearer. They have also been proposed to be a costume for the ritual transformation into a boar, similar to berserkers, and to be associated with Freyr.
Warriors wearing boar-crested helmets on a Torslunda plate, dated to between the 6th and 8th century CE.
Gundestrup cauldron depiction, dating to between 200 BCE and 300 CE
Horncastle boar crest fragment
Wollaston Helmet