MEDIEVAL SCABBARD

1300

Silver scabbard chape made from sheet metal with a neat soldered seam up the back. The tip is damaged but was probably originally cut and folded in to form a closed end. The mouth is also damaged, but some of the original edges survive at the front to show that it had a decorative cut-out shaped into an ogee curve with a groove in the centre. To either side of this cut-out is a panel of cross-hatched engraving, and there is an engraved fleur-de-lis springing from the groove. There is no other decoration and the rest of the chape is smoothly polished. Surviving length 42 mm, width at mouth 14 mm, thickness at mouth 9 mm. Although David Gaimster from the British Museum has dated this chape to the 16th or early 17th century, the ogee curve at the mouth, coupled with the central groove, has similarities to 14th-century metalwork and perhaps the safest dating is late medieval to early post-medieval. The chape has also been to the Royal Armouries, but they could not shed any further light on it.