nasal helmet

A further type of nasal helmet developed in the late 12th century.

From being uniformly conical in shape, the skull of the nasal helmet became more varied during the 12th century.

The nasal helmet would usually have been worn over a mail coif, which protected the lower parts of the head, throat and neck.

Early nasal helmets were universally conical in shape.

It probably evolved from the nasal helmet, which had been produced in a flat-topped variant with a square profile by about 1180.

For most of the century nasal helmets with a forward deflected apex, often called the 'Phrygian cap' shape, were in widespread use.

King Richard I of England is depicted wearing a round-skulled nasal helmet on his first Great Seal (1189).

Though still used, the conical type of helmet declined in popularity during the latter half of the 12th century and round-topped nasal helmets came into fashion.

Round-skulled nasal helmets can also be seen worn by a proportion knights throughout the French Maciejowski Bible dating to 1250.

This form of nasal helmet was the forerunner of deeper, cylindrical helmets with greater facial protection, enclosed helmets, and eventually the great helm.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the housecarls as footmen clad in mail, with conical nasal helmets, and fighting with the great, two-handed Dane axe.

The nasal helmet was characterised by the possession of a nose-guard, or 'nasal', composed of a single strip of metal that extended down from the skull or browband over the nose to provide facial protection.

Many soldiers, including knights, disliked the restriction to sight and hearing imposed by the enclosed helmet, and therefore the more open round-topped and flat-topped nasal helmets, plus 'kettle hats', continued in use alongside it into the mid 13th century.

The celebrated incident at the Battle of Hastings, illustrated on the Bayeux tapestry, where William the Conqueror had to lift his helmet to show his troops that he was still alive is an indication of the anonymity nasal helmets produced.

Though nasals had been used on earlier helmets, and on contemporary helmets found in Byzantium, Slavic Eastern Europe and the Middle East, those characteristic of the nasal helmet were in general larger and were fully integrated into either the skull or browband of the helmet.

The nasal helmet was a type of combat helmet characterised by the possession of a projecting bar covering the nose and thus protecting the centre of the face; it was of Western European origins and was used from the Early Middle Ages until the High Middle Ages.