| Description
| Plumed helmet, as worn by officers of the 90th Regiment from 1794-1803.
This is a replica of the first type of headdress worn by the 90th Perthshire Volunteers. It was created from the original helmet worn by Colonel (later General Lord) Rowland Hill at the Battle of Mandora, Egypt, in 1801. When the Cameronian Museum was established in Hamilton Barracks in 1930 an appeal was issued in the Regimental magazine, The Covenanter, to source an example of the original headdress worn by the 90th Light Infantry.
In July 1931 the Royal United Services Institute in London loaned the helmet worn by Colonel Hill to the Regimental Museum. This was taken to the Regimental Tailor, William Anderson of Edinburgh, where a replica was made for the Regimental Museum. Colonel Hill's helmet was returned to the Royal United Services Institute and is now part of the collection of the National Army Museum.
Made of boiled and pressed leather, the helmet was lightweight, yet afforded the wearer a small degree of protection against sword cuts. It was adorned with a bearskin crest, green ostrich-feather plume and a brass-bound peak.
Colonel Hill was wounded during the Battle of Mandora when a musket ball struck the brass rim of his helmet. He described the event in a letter to Thomas Graham, the Perthshire laird who raised the 90th Regimet in 1794:
“My wound, thank God! is not much; my helmet saved my life; a ball struck me in the front, just on the peak, which is covered with brass and resisted the ball so much that it did not enter my head, but flattened the helmet, which made a small wound but violent contusion.”
The Battle of Mandora was the first Battle Honour won by the 90th Perthshire Volunteers. Colonel Hill went on to become the Duke of Wellington's most trusted commander and was present at the Battle of Waterloo. He went on to the rank of General and was also appointed Commander in Chief, the first of three officers of the 90th to hold this post, the highest in the British Army. |
