Breastplate (body armour): HEN.M.110-1933

Maker(s)

Production: Unknown

Entities

• Breastplate (body armour)
• Skirt
• breastplate with skirt

Categories

• Armour

Description

Breastplate with skirt for infantry or light use. Formed of a rounded, medially-ridged main plate projecting forward over the belly and fitted with moveable gussets at the arm-openings, a separate waist-plate and a skirt of three lames. The almost straight neck-opening and the gussets have boldly roped inward turns. The main plate is pierced just below the centre of the neck-opening with a pair of lace-holes. A later hole is pierced just below them. The gussets are secured to the main plate by modern, round-headed rivets at their upper and lower ends. Those at the upper end move within slots in the gusset. Attached to the top of each gusset by a single externally-flush rivet is a small, double-ended buckle with a central tongue, filed decoration and plain rectangular hasp, of which the right is damaged and the left is restored. Fitted within the lower edge of the main plate and secured to it by three modern, round-headed rivets, of which the right one retains an internal washer, is a waist-plate which is flanged outwards to receive a skirt and decorated at the waist-line with a pair of incised lines. Attached to the waist-flange by a modern, round-headed rivet with an octagonal internal washer at either end is a contemporary, but associated, skirt of three upward-overlapping lames, each of which is medially ridged and decorated at the centre of its upper edge with a filed ogee. The rivets occupy modern holes in the first lame of the skirt that have been pierced just to the inside of the original connecting-holes which are now filled with modern, round-headed rivets. The outer ends of the skirt-lames have file-roped partial turns accompanied by recessed borders. The lames are connected to one another by sliding rivets near their outer ends, and were formerly connected to one another by internal leathers secured by externally-flush rivets at their outer ends and to either side of the centre. Fragments of the leathers are preserved at the right outer end of the second lame and the left outer end of the third lame. The third lame is fitted at either side with a pair of modern straps for the attachment of tassets, although the arrangement of the rivets and holes in that lame show that the missing tassets were originally articulated to it directly. The straps are retained by the sliding rivets that connect the third to the second lame and by round-headed rivets that occupy modern holes pierced to either side of the centre of the third lame. The right end of the third lame, which was broken off through the slot for the sliding-rivet, is replaced by a modern restoration secured by three externally-flush rivets.

Notes

History note: Mr James Stewart Henderson of 'Abbotsford', Downs Road, St Helen's Park, Hastings, Sussex.

Legal notes

J.S. Henderson Bequest

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1933-03-16) by Henderson, James Stewart

Dating

16th Century, Mid#
Production date: circa AD 1540

Note

South German

The breastplate and skirt are bright with light patination and some patches of pitting, especially at the gussets which show some rust-perforations.