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SUTTON HOO - My Buried History

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Bianca
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« Reply #90 on: August 09, 2009, 07:21:14 pm »









Walking out to the mounds today, it's difficult to imagine all that hullabaloo. They lie on the spur (or "hoo") of a 100ft hill, 500 yards or so east of the Deben, flanked by conifers and wheat fields. When I visit, the surrounding meadow is shimmering with heat, as it would have been in that long hot summer before the war. Butterflies dance around the barrier rope and larks spurt up out of the yellowed grass. There are 18 mounds, many of them flattened by centuries of ploughing. Mound Two – which contained a ship over a burial chamber, long plundered – has been rebuilt to its original plum pudding shape. Mound One, home to the main ship burial and treasure, is marked by a simple pair of stakes, one for the prow, one for the stern, and can be seen from a raised walkway.

"Edith Pretty was persuaded to excavate by a local historian," explains Angus Wainwright, the archaeologist for the East of England region of the National Trust, which took over the site in 1998, "and the Ipswich Museum suggested a fine Suffolk archaeologist, Basil Brown. He found ship rivets in Mound Two and recognised them for what they were."

It was a good start. A Victorian dig at one of the mounds had unearthed two bushels of iron ship rivets and given them to the local blacksmith for making horseshoes.

The National Trust shares its responsibilities with the Sutton Hoo Society; the latter does site tours while Trust volunteers man the exhibition that occupies a grey timber building 10 minutes' walk away. Wainwright helped set up the exhibition: to their horror, the researchers found that most visitors knew nothing at all about the Anglo-Saxons. The originators of so much English culture – place names, kingship, legal system – had somehow been squeezed out by the sexier Romans and Vikings. Their delicate interlaced designs were assumed to be Celtic. Even now, some people still leave thinking that Sutton Hoo contained a Viking ship.

"If we called it 'The Sutton Hoo Viking Burial' we'd probably double our visitor numbers," says Wainwright, laughing. "So in the end we decided to focus on the site, while doing a major PR job for the Anglo-Saxons."

They also had to contend with the fact that most of the actual treasure – apart from a rotating selection of objects lent each year – resides in the British Museum.

The result weaves together the history of the burials, the provenance of the objects and the undeniable human interest of their discovery. There are huge black-and-white photographs showing Basil Brown in a flat cap, waistcoat, tie and jacket, and Mrs Pretty watching the dig from a wicker chair. A member of Philips' Cambridge team – who took over the excavation of the treasure while Brown continued his painstaking work with the ship – wears Oxford bags and white shoes and puffs earth off a find using what look like Mrs Pretty's bellows.
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Bianca
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« Reply #91 on: August 09, 2009, 07:22:32 pm »










Then I turn a corner and there is a case of finds – real, not reproductions – excavated from Mound 17 in 1992. It contained two parallel graves, one for a warrior, one for his horse: in the cabinet are a sumptuous buckle of garnets and blue glass, and fine gold discs from the horse's harness, incised with interlacing ("the little secret details that the Anglo-Saxons loved," says Wainwright) around bosses of garnet and white shell. Next to them is a bit, ferociously rusted, but recognisably a snaffle, as used by a seventh-century horse.

At the centre of the exhibition is a reconstruction of the burial chamber. The king – the body was never found, but he may have been the great leader of the East Angles, Raedwald – was buried some time in the early 600s under blankets of warm, waterproof loop pile, wearing a woollen tunic of the finest red weave.

Near him lies a mighty sword, pattern-welded in the Anglo-Saxon fashion using flattened twists of metal, the whole polished to bring out the design. Beside that is the helmet that has come to symbolise Sutton Hoo: made of a single piece of tinned iron, decorated with dancing figures, its eyebrows, nose and moustache form a flying dragon, nose-to-nose with a jewel-eyed serpent slithering over the crown. Around these are feasting items – from drinking horns to a huge silver dish, possibly a diplomatic gift, with a Constantinople mark – a board game, an iron standard and a ceremonial whetstone or sceptre, crafted from iron-hard greywacke.

It seems incredible that all this could have lain undiscovered under that innocuous mound a few hundred yards away. As the story unfolds it reveals many miracles: that grave robbers – who were hard at work from the 1600s – just missed the treasure; that Mrs Pretty chose to excavate and found the right people to do it; that the summer of 1939 was hot, for rain would have washed away the sand remains, protected only by rudimentary planks and canvas (the objects were apparently packed in fruit boxes from Woodbridge market on beds of moss); that two amateur lady photographers happened to turn up and take detailed photographs and some cine film of the work, for the official records kept by the Cambridge team were later destroyed by a bomb.
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Bianca
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« Reply #92 on: August 09, 2009, 07:24:49 pm »










As I leave, I notice a huge, empty rectangle of gravel. It was meant for a full-sized replica of the ship – funds have not yet allowed – and it is startling to realise just how enormous it was: 90 feet long, 15 feet wide, five feet deep.

Perhaps the final miracle is that it belongs to us: the treasure was left to the British Museum (the estate was given to the National Trust by a later owner). Disastrous party or not, we should all be raising a glass of sherry to Mrs Pretty.





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Sutton Hoo basics


Sutton Hoo, Woodbridge, Suffolk (01394 389700; www.nationaltrust.org.uk/suttonhoo), is open daily from 10.30am to 5pm in summer; check website for other times. Gift Aid/Standard admission: adults £6.50/£5.90, children £3.40/£2.95 and family tickets £16.45/£14.95 The temporary exhibition Welcome to the Feast runs until November 1.

On August 9, the stonemason and sculptor Brian Ansell unveils his replica of the mysterious sceptre/whetstone found at the burial, as part of the annual "Sutton Hoo Through the Ages" event (August 8-9).

The Sutton Hoo Society (www.suttonhoo.org) organises all the site tours and has an excellent website.
The Sutton Hoo treasure is in Room 41 of the British Museum (www.britishmuseum.org) and includes the famous helmet and sword and exquisite decorative objects such as the gold and cloisonnι purse, belt buckle and sword fittings from Mound 1.

Seckford Hall Hotel (01394 385678; www.seckford.co.uk) is 15 minutes away: doubles/twins from £185 per night; breakfast from £11.95.

For more information on Suffolk, see www.visit-suffolk.org.uk and www.visiteastofengland.com
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Bianca
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« Reply #93 on: August 09, 2009, 07:26:05 pm »










Anglo-Saxon Suffolk



Suffolk's sandy soils, proximity to the sea and links with north-west Europe make it a major source of Anglo-Saxon history (although a rich burial has recently been uncovered at Prittlewell, Essex) and site of the only ship burials in Britain:

West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village, Bury St Edmunds (01284 728718; www.weststow.org), is a reconstruction of a village, archaeological evidence of which was found under sandy deposits in the Sixties. Its living history events show how people lived in the seventh century.

Snape Anglo-Saxon Ship Burial, Aldeburgh Museum (01728 454666;

www.aldeburghmuseum.org.uk): nowhere near as rich a find as Sutton Hoo, it did yield a gold ring set with a Roman intaglio, plus the remains of a claw beaker – a drinking glass with hollow protrusions. A replica ring, the beaker and burial urns can be seen at the museum.

Ipswich Museum (01206 282931; www.ipswich.gov.uk), run by Colchester and Ipswich Museum Services, has an Anglo-Saxon Art in the Round exhibition until September 5 in Gallery 3 in the Town Hall, with lovely objects on display and workshops on Saxon torc, or brooch, making.
« Last Edit: August 09, 2009, 07:28:34 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
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