My 'New' Sun Helmet, Opinions please :)

[Oswald Bastable]

Good afternoon Gentlemen,

I recently (finally) made my first sun helmet purchase and I'm keen to get the opinions of the better informed on what I've purchased. What I would like to know is...anything you can tell me about it! the first obvious question, is it 'real', how old do you think it is and any other details you can glean.

I thought I'd start with what I think I know or have noticed and then you can correct me or add to it hopefully

Obviously a Wolseley style helmet, The red silk lining and the outfitters label (assuming its real) etc suggests its an officers private purchase. There is a badly disintegrated ribbon around the top of the puggaree, at first glance it looks a very dull green colour but on closer inspection, where it seems to have been less exposed (to the sun?) it looks very much like a navy blue colour.

I also have a final utter new person question for you; was the Wolseley pattern actually designed by the greatman or was it it merely named after him? I've seen different sources saying both and as I lack a decent library on the subject its been annoying me for quite some time.

Photographs below, my camera is clearly rubbish as these were taken at lunch time on a sunny day (though the room doesnt have a lot of natural light)

Thanks for your time

Edited May 24, 2012 by Oswald Bastable

[Oswald Bastable]

Some additional photographs of the interior

[Mervyn Mitton]

Oswald - what a pity Stuart Bates is no longer with the Forum - he wrote the book on these helmets.

Since the label says Naval outfitters - then presumably the Blue band represents Navy. Gieves are one opf the top London

outfitters for the Services.

Hopefully a member will be able to establish who P.M.Archdale was - the initials ARC are interesting - I wonder if they have

anything to do with Ark Royal ?

[Oswald Bastable]

Mervyn that was very much my thinking with regards to the Navy. Yes a real shame Stuart is no longer about. I had thought ARC was refering to the owners surname,written before the labels were added perhaps? A reference to Ark Royal would be marvellous of course! I've also noticed written in pencel on the inside there is is FX/S 23/6 , I had thought this might be a retailers mark with the price but as 23 shillings would make it over a pound wouldnt it be written as 1/3/6? (plus wouldnt an officers outfitter splash out on some paper tags?)

Edited May 25, 2012 by Oswald Bastable

[Oswald Bastable]

I hadn't actually thought of trying to find out about the previous owner (assuming its all Kosher) until you mentioned it but some google-fu does turn up a Patrick Mervyn Archdale RN as shown here

http://www.unithistories.com/officers/RN_officersA6.html

he served in the Great War after signing up in 1914, and retired in 1935 to go into insurance and came out of retirement in 1939 and served as 1st officer on the battleship HMS Nelson until 1943 and was then college commander at RN College Greenwich until 1945 when promoted to Acting Captain he commanded a infantry landing ship HMS Glenroy and retired for good in 1946.

If this really was his service helmet I'm rather thrilled to find out about him.

[Oswald Bastable]

arghhh, I reorganised my photos and then realised it would break the links on here, is there a way to edit my earlier posts to put the new links in?

[Oswald Bastable]

Looks like I need to repost the photos, here they are