English Basket Hilt

[Peter Hudson]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

The late Mr. Blair's paper on basket hilts is outstanding!
By London makers, I was referring mostly to Jeffries and Drury, who hilted these military basket hilts for infantry units including Black Watch, known to have used these. They turned them in in 1784 as infantry ceased carrying swords.

As far as the range of English basket hilts, there were numbers of them produced in garrison towns such as Glasgow and Sterling, following more Scottish style. Most others were likely produced by many 'sword slippers' in any number of locations.

Hello Jim, I was reading up on the Mary Rose about the English Basket Hilt found after the vessel was recovered recently following its disastrous sinking over 400 years ago and where many revealing weapons were discovered including an English Basket Hilt.

Clearly a tradition had evolved in Scottish quarters that the origin of Basket hilts was in Scotland when in fact it was earlier when this style had appeared .. as a European weapon ...obviously adopted in such armouries as English then presumably slowly filtering North to develop as Scottish Basket Hilts and with the passage of time being associated with that provenance...
I also wanted to say how much I enjoyed this thread and thanks to all who had joined in...

Regards Peter Hudson