

The real Sutton Hoo treasures are on display at the British Museum in London, but the replicas in the newly refurbished exhibition hall at Sutton Hoo probably do a better job of putting the objects into context. Most historians tend to believe it was Raedwald, King of East Anglia. The body inside had similarly decomposed, but the magnificent regalia carefully placed around it suggest that the deceased was once a prominent leader. What she cannot have imagined was the discovery of two Dark Age cemeteries, one of which is probably Britain’s most famous burial.Īlthough the timber had long since rotted, archaeologist Basil Brown spotted the outline of a ship in the soil and deduced that an oak vessel had been hauled from a river and pulled into a trench. Sutton Hoo, SuffolkĮdith Pretty probably expected a few interesting objects to emerge from the soil when she employed an archaeologist to excavate the ancient burial mounds near her home at Woodbridge in Suffolk.

However, do not spend so much time inside the museum that you miss the chance to wander through the reconstructed working Anglo-Saxon farm, complete with rare-breed animals and enthusiastic costumed re-enactors. Yet the troublesome Welsh still refused to submit.įamiliarize yourself with the venerable scholar, the church to which he dedicated his life and the northern kingdom he called home.

For more than 200 years, the most prominent of the petty royals were those who ruled Mercia and controlled much of England south of the River Humber. Offa's DykeĪfter the Romans left, Britain was anything but a united kingdom as it fractured into a number of small, often feuding kingdoms. See more in the rebuilt Saxon and Viking houses at the Ancient Technology Centre at Cranborne in Dorset. The on-site museum and gallery displays everyday objects pulled from the soil in the excavations including jewelry, tools and weapons. Question the knowledgeable re-enactors about the traditional crafts they demonstrate. Step over each threshold and imagine what life was like for its inhabitants. The sunken buildings and halls are small spaces – the families who lived in them must have been snug – but the craftsmanship required to construct the warm thatched roofs and neat plank walls indicate that this was once a highly skilled and close-knit community. Eight have been recreated by archaeologists as they try to deduce the techniques used by their Anglo-Saxon ancestors and the results of their experiments form the centerpiece of an open-air museum in what is now West Stow Country Park.

More than 150 years of research has now revealed the footprint of 70 wooden buildings.
