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 was constructed by covering the outside of an iron framework with plates of horn and the inside with cloth or leather; the organic material has since decayed.

The helmet features a unique combination of structural and technical attributes, but contemporaneous parallels exist for its individual characteristics.

The most striking feature of the helmet is the boar at its apex; this pagan symbol faces towards a Christian cross on the nasal in a display of syncretism.

[4][3] Eight plates of horn, probably softened and bent and suggested to be from cattle,[note 1] were cut to fit the eight spaces created by the iron frame.

[12] In addition to the aesthetic elements incorporated into the basic construction of the helmet, two features provide added decoration: a cross on the nasal and a boar on the crest.

[15] Around the cross in a zigzag pattern are twenty-nine silver studs, out of a suggested original forty, that were probably tapped into small holes drilled into the horn.

[23] Eyes were formed with 5 mm (0.20 in) long pointed oval garnets set into gold sockets with filigree wire edging.

[24] Individual pieces of gilded bronze seem to have formed the tail, tusks, muzzle, jawline, and ears of the boar, but few traces of them now remain.

[33] Yet thousands of furnished Anglo-Saxon graves have been excavated since the start of the 19th century and helmets remain rare;[34][35][36] this may partly reflect poor rates of artefact survival or even recognition, but their extreme scarcity indicates that they were never deposited in great numbers.

[28] Thomas Bateman, an archaeologist and antiquarian who led the excavation,[note 2] described Benty Grange as "a high and bleak situation";[37] its barrow, which still survives, is prominently located by a major Roman road,[40] now roughly parallel to the A515 in the area,[41] possibly to display the burial to passing travellers.

[45][46][note 3] The area came under the control of the Mercian kingdom around the 8th century;[46] the Benty Grange and other rich barrows suggest that the Pecsæte may have had their own dynasty beforehand, but there is no written evidence for this.

[53] Bateman suggested a body once lay at its centre, flat against the original surface of the soil;[37][55] what he described as the one remnant, strands of hair, is now thought to be from a cloak of fur, cowhide or something similar.

[62] Also found were the remnants of three hanging bowl escutcheons,[61][62][63] as well as "a knot of very fine wire", and some "thin bone variously ornamented with lozenges &c."[62] attached to silk, but that soon decayed when exposed to air.

Upon the top, or crown of the helmet, is an elongated oval brass plate, upon which stands the figure of an animal, carved in iron, now very much rusted, but still a very good representation of a pig: it has bronze eyes.

There are also many smaller decorations, abounding in rivets, which have pertained to the helmet, but which it is impossible to assign to their proper places, as is also the case with some small iron buckles.

[75] On 27 October 1848 he reported his discoveries, including the helmet, cup, and hanging bowl, at a meeting of the British Archaeological Association,[76][77][78] and in 1855 it was catalogued along with other objects from the Benty Grange barrow.

[82][83] From 8 November 1991 to 8 March 1992 it joined the Coppergate helmet at the British Museum for The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, AD 600–900.

[53] The list entry notes that "[a]lthough the centre of Benty Grange [barrow] has been partially disturbed by excavation, the monument is otherwise undisturbed and retains significant archaeological remains.

[90] Permission to carry out the work had been requested the previous year,[91] when Rupert Bruce-Mitford, recently returned from World War II service in the Royal Signals to an assistant keepership at the museum,[92] spent time in Sheffield examining the Benty Grange grave goods.

[51] Permission was obtained from the curator and trustees of the Weston Park Museum for the proposed work, and, by February 1948—when, shortly before the centennial of its excavation, Bruce-Mitford exhibited it to the Society of Antiquaries of London—the Benty Grange helmet was brought to London.

[107] While other Anglo-Saxon helmets were typically formed with wide perpendicular bands and four infill plates,[108][109][110][note 6] their Swedish counterparts from Vendel and Valsgärde display similar use of thin iron frameworks.

Christianity almost disappeared in southern Britain after its conquest by the pagan Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries, apart from the surviving Celtic areas of southwest England and Wales.

It rapidly converted kingdoms as far north as Northumbria, but initial success was often followed by a period of apostasy and in several cases the final conversion was carried out by Irish missionaries from Iona.

[123] The boar had symbolic import in prehistoric Europe, where, according to the archaeologist Jennifer Foster, it was "venerated, eulogised, hunted and eaten ... for millennia, until its virtual extinction in recent historical time.

[127][128] Boar-crested helmets are depicted on the turn-of-the-millennium Gundestrup cauldron, discovered in Denmark, and on a Torslunda plate from Sweden, made 500 years later.

[126] The boar persisted in continental Germanic tradition during the nearly 400 years of Roman rule in Britain, such as in association with the Scandinavian gods Freyja[130][131] and Freyr.

He was Yrmenlaf's elder brother and a soul-mate to me, a true mentor, my right-hand man when the ranks clashed and our boar-crests had to take a battering in the line of action.

The devastation wrought by Grendel's mother itself invokes a boar-crested helmet, for "[h]er onslaught was less only by as much as an amazon warrior's strength is less than an armed man's when the hefted sword, its hammered edge and gleaming blade slathered in blood, razed the sturdy boar-ridge off a helmet"[1] (Wæs se gryre læssa efne swa micle, swa bið mægþa cræft, wiggryre wifes be wæpnedmen, þonne heoru bunden, hamere geþruen, sweord swate fah swin ofer helme ecgum dyhtig andweard scireð.

[150]) These two passages likely refer to boar-crests like those found on the Benty Grange and Wollaston helmets,[140][141][145] and the detached Guilden Morden boar.