I think we need to return to the fact that neither the finder nor the landowner did anything at variance with current laws governing the discovery of non Treasure archaeological material. There was a lot of abuse aimed at the finder and landowner from those seeking to use it to serve other agendas.
Lets look at it another way if by chance the findspot area had come under an excavation brief prior to development the helmet would have probably been missed by trial trenches and bulldozed away when the developers moved in and be lost in the many tons of excavated spoil dumped elsewhere. So much for heritage protection in such cases when so much is destoyed daily by developers after the minimal archaeological planning brief has been satisfied.
At least there is a record of the helmet and perhaps in another hundred years someone will find another.
Lets look at it another way if by chance the findspot area had come under an excavation brief prior to development the helmet would have probably been missed by trial trenches and bulldozed away when the developers moved in and be lost in the many tons of excavated spoil dumped elsewhere. So much for heritage protection in such cases when so much is destoyed daily by developers after the minimal archaeological planning brief has been satisfied.
At least there is a record of the helmet and perhaps in another hundred years someone will find another.