Chain mail

[Raf]

Examples of medieval European chain mail are hard to find so I was pleased to get this fragment recovered from the mud of the River Thames. It consists in the main of brass rings from a decorative border with some of the mercury gilding still present. The corroded lump appears to contain some iron rings but it seems unlikely that these can be recovered. The links are relatively tiny , around 7 mm and the round wire is so fine that it seems impossible to imagine how they were so neatly riveted.

For information the difference between European and oriental mail is in the way the links are riveted. European mail almost exclusively uses what is called a wedged rivet. The links are punched with a slightly elliptical hole and a wedge shaped piece of metal cut from a flat strip is pushed into the hole from the dished side. The rivet is closed using special heavy duty pliers resulting in a visible rivet head on one side of the link only . Oriental mail uses a domed headed rivet which is visible on both sides of the link.

It has been estimated that a hauberk could require around half a mile of hand drawn wire and take the equivalent of 6 months / man hours to produce so it can never have been cheap . The gilded border could imply a high status armour although the additional cost might have been considered trivial if it added to the perceived value of the armour.

It is difficult to say what it is a fragment of but in the main consists of a triangular section of interlinked rings about 300mm wide . A guess might be the border of a collar , sometimes called a bishops mantle. Difficult to date but maybe thirteenth /fourteenth century ? All opinions welcome.