Original Item: Only One Available. The Household Cavalry is made up of the two most senior regiments in the British Army: the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals. It is divided into the Household Cavalry Regiment, stationed at Kiwi Barracks in Wiltshire, and the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, which is garrisoned at Hyde Park Barracks in London.

The soldiers of the Household Cavalry have acted as the monarch’s guardians since 1660. It is also the public face of the British Army both in the UK and abroad. The Household Cavalry Regiment has an active operational role which sees soldiers serve in armored fighting vehicles, handling the nation’s conflicts.

The Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment carries out ceremonial duties on state and royal occasions, such as Trooping the Colour. This is the regiment that accompanied the Queen’s coffin at the London parade.

This is an absolutely beautiful, genuine British 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen’s Bays) Parade helmet and comes complete with the partial leather liner, ringed chin scales and black-dyed genuine horsehair plume. The helmet does show use and long time neglected storage and is in need of a good cleaning, although we have left it as is to preserve the gorgeous patina. The helmet plate on the front is in great shape with the two in the center indicating use by the 2nd Dragoon Guards

The chinscales do not retain their original leather strap, and one of the two rosettes meant to hold the chinscales in place is missing, replaced with a bolt. The liner is mostly gone, only leaving the leather liner band, and the interior chinstrap is missing.

This wonderful example comes more than ready for display.

The 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays) was a cavalry regiment of the British Army. It was first raised in 1685 by the Earl of Peterborough as the Earl of Peterborough's Regiment of Horse by merging four existing troops of horse.

Renamed several times, it was designated the Queen's Regiment of Dragoon Guards in 1746 as it evolved into a dragoon unit (dragoons described a force of highly mobile mounted infantry equipped with lighter, faster horses and carrying firearms) and later named the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays) in 1767 to reflect the custom of its soldiers riding only bay horses.

The regiment served as horse cavalry until 1937, when it was mechanised with light tanks. The regiment became part of the Royal Armoured Corps in 1939. After service in the First and Second World Wars, the regiment amalgamated with the 1st King's Dragoon Guards in 1959 to form the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards.

The regiment next saw action when a squadron under Major Piercy Smith charged the rebels at the capture of Lucknow in March 1858 during the Indian Rebellion. It suffered heavy losses in an action at Leeukop in March 1902 during the Second Boer War.