Ornate gold helmet from Staffordshire hoard recreated

Parts of the replicas rely on 'respectable guesstimate' of what the original looked like

Experts working on the Staffordshire hoard have recreated one of its great treasures, a rare gold helmet, revealing for the first time the spectacular impression its original wearer would have made.

The hoard, discovered by a metal detectorist in a field near Lichfield in 2009, is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork ever found. But while the quality of its workmanship was exceptional, most of its items were deliberately bent or broken into more than 4,000 pieces before being buried in the ground in the seventh century.