22 August 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Unique Roman Cavalry Parade Helmet Recreated

Two replicas have been created of the gilded silver unique Roman cavalry helmet that amateur archaeologists found in 2001 while investigating an Iron Age site at Hallaton, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire.

Rajesh Gogna, a Leicestershire-based silversmith senior lecturer and practice-based researcher at De Montfort University, created a replica helmet by creating a model, which was 3D printed in plastic then silver-plated and gilded.

Another helmet was handcrafted by archaeologist and replica maker Francesco Galluccio, who used traditional methods that would have been familiar to the original Roman armourer.

They are now both on display, one at the Hallaton Museum, the other at the Harborough Museum in Market Harborough alongside the original helmet.

In 2000, an important Iron Age British shrine was discovered just outside the village of Hallaton in Leicestershire. It was built around the time of the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 A.D. as a ritual enclosure for the local Corieltavi tribe, who held feasts and made animal and valuable offerings there. Excavations in 2001 unearthed over 5,500 British and Roman coins, jewelry, and animal bones, as well as a helmet fit for a Roman cavalry officer.

The finished replica with its silver-plated and gilded exterior gives an impression of how impressive the Hallaton Helmet once was. Photo: Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society

The helmet has been reconstructed by conservators after suffering deterioration during burial. The fragments were pieced back together and today the helmet is 80% complete with some gaps filled to give it structural support. It was made of iron covered with very thin silver-gilt sheet which features beautiful designs on its surfaces created using a hammering technique called repoussé.

The decorated silver-gilt plating is of the highest standard. The helmet’s bowl is adorned with a leaf wreath, a symbol of military victory, and the peaked brow guard bears a striking bust of a woman flanked by lions and rams. The helmet would have originally had two cheekpieces that hinged on the side to protect the side of the face. These survive separately because they are too fragile to reattach to the helmet. The cheekpieces show a Roman emperor on horseback, with the goddess Victory flying behind.  Beneath his horse’s hooves is a cowering figure, a defeated enemy.

Its shiny surface was corroded and damaged after being buried in mud for two millennia. Today, it appears somewhat lumpy and brown, and it is difficult to see the decoration’s details with the unaided eye.

Staff and volunteers at the museum have also been involved in work to create two replicas of the helmet, to show how it might have looked at the time of the Roman occupation of Britain after 43AD.

Francesco’s replica was created using traditional tools with which the Roman master craftsman who produced the original helmet would have been familiar. Photo: Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society
Francesco’s replica was created using traditional tools with which the Roman master craftsman who produced the original helmet would have been familiar. Photo: Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society

Curators at the museum, art historians, illustrators, and conservators collaborated to reexamine the helmet to create the replicas. They took pictures of it in bright light, searching for patterns and shapes that they could then cross-reference with other works of art from the middle of the first century. The 3D scans and annotated images served as a guide for the archaeological illustrator as they recreated the areas devoid of decoration. The procedure exposed a pair of griffins on the back of the helmet bowl that had gone unnoticed before, with an amphora between them.

Using 3D scans of the bowl, Rajesh Gogna and his team first created a CAD model of the helmet. The different reconstruction drawings of the helmet’s iconography created by illustrator Debbie Miles were then 3D modeled in close collaboration with the Leicestershire Museum Collections team. The CAD model was electroformed, silver-plated, gilded, and 3D printed in SLA resin.

Rajesh was able to create two helmets that were exactly the same using this modern method of silversmithing: one for the Hallaton Museum and one for the Harborough Museum in Market Harborough. The replica at Hallaton Museum was also made possible by contributions from the Association for Roman Archaeology.

Renowned Italian archaeologist and replica creator Francesco Galluccio has created authentic reconstructions that are on display in museums throughout Europe, such as the Vatican and Rome’s Capitoline Museums.

Francesco first forged an iron core for the helmet as the original helmet would have been made similarly. Measurements were taken from 3D scans of the original by Design Futures to enable accurate shaping and sizing. The decorative outer layer was worked in brass sheet (this part of the process would have been undertaken in thin silver sheet on the original helmet but the cost of this was prohibitive) and overlaid on the iron core.

The original Roman cavalry helmet is now being exhibited in a new case, with both cheekpieces reattached. The other five cheekpieces found at the Hallaton ritual site are on display with it.

Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society

Related Articles

Four-face ivory dice found at Keezhadi excavation site in India

18 February 2022

18 February 2022

The Tamil Nadu Archaeological department along with the Archaeological Survey of India has unearthed rectangular ivory dice,  in the excavation...

A rare 3,300-year-old wooden yoke found in northern Italy

30 October 2023

30 October 2023

After eight years of complex excavation, recovery, and restoration, a rare 3,300-year-old wooden yoke discovered in a Late Bronze Age...

Dominican mission discovers 1,305-meter Greco-Roman ancient rock-cut tunnel in Alexandria

4 November 2022

4 November 2022

A Greco-Roman tunnel measuring 1,305 meters in length was discovered beneath Tapuziris Magna, an Ancient Egyptian city, by an Egyptian-Dominican...

Famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass Wants to See Hieroglyphs as an İntegral Part of The Curriculum

23 February 2021

23 February 2021

The Egyptian council of ministers is discussing the introduction of archaeological and tourist materials in the education curriculum to help...

New research determines portable toilets of the ancient Roman world

11 February 2022

11 February 2022

New research published today reveals how archeologists can determine when a pot was used by Romans as a portable toilet,...

Archaeologists unearth the Torah Ark of the Great Synagogue of Vilna, destroyed in Lithuania

30 August 2021

30 August 2021

In Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, in excavation exposed the Torah ark and bimah (raised prayer platform) of the Great...

500-year-old board game discovered carved into a stone slab in a Polish castle

12 September 2023

12 September 2023

A board game carved into stone was discovered by archaeologists investigating the castle at Ćmielów in the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship in...

No Ancient Super-Highway: The Reality of Europe’s Erdstall and the Scotland-Türkiye Tunnel

28 April 2025

28 April 2025

The internet continues to buzz with the captivating notion of an immense, prehistoric tunnel network stretching from the Scottish Highlands,...

A pre-Hispanic ceremonial center with unknown characteristics was discovered in the Andes

15 April 2023

15 April 2023

While investigating at Waskiri, near the Lauca River and the Bolivian-Chilean border, archaeologists found an impressive circular construction on a...

A 2,000-year-old wooden bridge that once linked England and Wales discovered

31 August 2023

31 August 2023

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of Roman and Anglo-Saxon fortifications in the town of Chepstow in the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, however,...

Archaeologists Discover 2,000-Year-Old Jug in Tajikistan Bearing Woman’s Name

4 July 2025

4 July 2025

In a discovery of rare historical and cultural significance, archaeologists in southern Tajikistan have uncovered a 2,000-year-old clay jug bearing...

The 4,500-year-old Wisconsin canoe was built around the same time that Stonehenge was being constructed

31 May 2024

31 May 2024

Historians from Wisconsin have reported the amazing finding of at least eleven prehistoric canoes in Lake Mendota, which is close...

2,700-year-old Children’s Cemetery unearthed in Turkey’s Tenedos

2 March 2024

2 March 2024

A 2700-year-old children’s cemetery was discovered during ongoing excavations in the ancient city of Tenedos in Bozcaada,  southeast of the...

Tang-e Chogan bas-relief carvings, Majestic treasures of Sassanid art, are under threat of destruction 

9 March 2022

9 March 2022

Treasures of Sassanid art, some of Tang-e Chogan’s bas-reliefs are under threat of complete destruction due to lack of maintenance...

Ancient Roman Chalice Contained Pig Fat Discovered in a 6th-century Anglo-Saxon Tomb in England

11 December 2024

11 December 2024

During excavations in Scremby, Lincolnshire in 2018, archaeologists uncovered an enameled copper alloy chalice in a 6th-century AD female grave....