by It’s a cold evening in November, and winter is settling in the Suffolk countryside. The paths that traverse the gentle slopes of Sutton Hoo are wet underfoot, their stony surfaces made helplessly slippery by a combination of autumn leaf mulch and the general dampness of the air.
There is even a shroud of mist, keeping close to the grass, beyond the mounds of the Royal Cemetery, where the ground slides down through the trees to the broad bend of the River Deben. And the end-of-the-year wan daylight plays its part, wandering low through the increasingly bare branches.
Squint – and, with the angle of the sun, I at you to, hold my hand to my face – and you might think yourself another time. But for the low grumble of a tractor on the farm next door, it could easily be the seventh century – and all is quiet on the East Anglian front.
It is so quiet, in fact, that I have the place to myself. Almost. Apart from a retired couple walking through this lovely pastoral landscape, there is no one else here. A great situation, really. As there is a growing argument that Sutton Hoo is Britain’s most important ancient site; a vital slide of the past that tells a vivid story of our country, shining a torch on the undocumented gloom of the supposed Dark Ages.
It’s a story – of Anglo-Saxon warlords carving out new kingdoms on the fringes of a changing Europe – that keeps unfolding. Until this summer, an archaeological dig in nearby Rendlesham turned up something amazing – the purported remains of a temple used by the kings of East Anglia.
This beautiful and quiet village is thought to have been a center of power. Sutton Hoo, just four miles south-west down the A1152, was a cemetery. A significant chapter of Dark Age history is glimmering in the light.
“[The site] like buildings in other parts of England that are seen as temples or houses of worship,” Professor Christopher Scull of University College London told the Telegraph last month. “Perhaps the early kings of the Eastern Isles removed it for pre-Christian worship. The results of these excavations at Rendlesham speak vividly of the power and wealth of the East Anglian kings – and the sophistication of the society they ruled.”
Of course, this is not the first time that a discovery here has caused excitement. Sutton Hoo first made headlines in the summer of 1938, when the site’s owner – the recently widowed magistrate Edith Pretty – called in local amateur archaeologist Basil Brown to see if he could solve the riddles of the mounds. huge at the south end of his property.
It didn’t take long for Brown to discover that the largest of these artificial hills had the metal vestiges of what had once been a large ship. A ship whose length was given by a careful estimate of 89 feet (27m). A ship in which a king was buried.
The events of those English digs – very early on, seniors at the Ipswich Museum, Cambridge University and the British Museum, before World War II intervened – are enough of a story in themselves. So much so that, in 2021, it was turned into a film, The Dig, with Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown, and Carey Mulligan putting emotions into the sad story of Edith Pretty, who would die only four years later.
But the bigger story is the story that has been hidden – at that point – for 1,300 years. And, approaching him along those slippery paths of Samhain, I can easily see him.
Although the Royal Cemetery has returned to nature, to some extent, since those various excavations – spreading out behind a small fence as a sort of barren meadow – its shape and scale are immediately apparent to the naked eye. The first thing that hits you is Mound Two – a large mound of earth, telling you that you have reached the cemetery.
There are 18 such mounds in total – including the most important, Mound One, which lies a little further back. It is best viewed via the 81-step climb to the top of the observation tower that rises at the southernmost corner of the property – a great addition to the Sutton Hoo site which will be installed in 2021.
From up here, the picture is even clearer. To date, only three Anglo-Saxon ship burials have been discovered in the UK. All three were found in Suffolk. The first was discovered by excavation at Snape Common, near Aldeburgh, in 1862. The other two are just below you, in the two larger mounds at Sutton Hoo.
From the observation deck, you can appreciate the effort involved. Behind the tower is the slope, the land falling away to the Deben. The boats would have to be pulled – with rope, hand and sinews – up that same river bank, warriors doing their duty, the sinews in their necks bulging, sweat beading on Anglo-Saxon brows.
It was also a great honor. Especially in the case of Mound One. There is no definitive proof of the identity of the king buried here – Suffolk’s acidic soil ate away at his mortal remains for centuries before Basil Brown broke into his tomb.
But analysis of coins found within the perimeter of the ship has narrowed the burial to a time frame of 610-635 AD, and the wealth of artefacts found elsewhere in the mound – and wealth and power (to echo Professor Scull) they found. praise – tell one man: Raedwald from East Anglia.
This was a ruler to whom wealth and power depended. Although it was written more than 200 years after his reign, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – one of the main sources of events in Britain during the Dark Ages – bears his name. Bretwald; in his “King of Britain”. This is supported by the works of the Venerable Bede, the monk historian who lived (672-735) much closer to Raedwald’s time, and who wrote about the victory of the East Anglian monarch at the (modern day) Battle of the River Idle. Nottinghamshire) about 617.
This was a seismic fight; victory over Aethelfrith of Northumbria. And although Raedwald came at a personal cost – his son Raegenhere was killed that day – the East Anglian was able to seize the lands belonging to the Northumbrian crown and place his vassal Edwin on the throne.
Bede gives us more information – that Raedwald ruled East Anglia between (about) 599 and his death in 624; that he was the first East Anglian king to convert to Christianity, probably in 605. But his supposed tomb adds color and shade to the words on the page.
The bronze helmet found in fragments near where the body would have been is an artefact of immeasurable value – now carefully reconstructed, and on display in the British Museum. He sings of skilled craftsmanship at a time when Britain is supposed to be falling away from the high standards of the Roman centuries; part a pragmatic piece of armor that would offer real protection during combat, part a quasi-crown decorated with a dragon motif, its ornamentation designed to show the royal status of the wearer.
Nor was he alone in the grave. A sword, its patterned blade still in its scabbard. There was a gold buckle of great intricacy, and a purse cover for a money bag of similar hand-forged wonders. And there were items that spoke of deep trade links – a set of 10 silver bowls from the Byzantine Empire, far across the Mediterranean; a pair of silver spoons from the same region.
Further valuable pieces were uncovered in 2000 when preparatory work for the new visitor center revealed a second cemetery – where a sixth-century bronze drinking vessel was found, bearing Syrian or Nubian friezes of warriors exposed in battle. A message on it, in ancient Greek, says: “Use this with good health, Counting Master, for many happy years”.
The dead, it seems, can talk about what they left behind. And at Sutton Hoo, they speak of Dark Age Britain, not closed off from the world on its own stagnant island, but open to mainland Europe and the Middle East; attached to and in ready conversation with both.
In fact, it is no exaggeration to describe the mounds of Sutton Hoo as the “Pyramids of Britain”; tombs that fill holes in our knowledge, long, long after the powerful men – and, in the case of Mound 14, women – who were buried within them have been lost to memory.
So, with the new archaeological findings up the road at Rendlesham, has Sutton Hoo overtaken Stonehenge as Britain’s most important ancient site? Maybe. And then again, maybe not. It depends, for one thing, on how you define “ancient”. Sutton Hoo, which was at its most prominent much more than a century after the fall of Rome, is situated at the outer limit of the term; the noble blocks of the Quarterstone, which were (probably) placed high on Salisbury Hill sometime between 2600 and 2400 BC, are distinctly prehistoric.
You could argue that even comparing the two is a case of apples and oranges; that a gap of three millennia renders such a discussion worthless. But where an important Wiltshire landmark has been blighted by over-tourism, and traffic on the A303 meters away, Sutton Hoo retains mystery, giving up more and more of its secrets.
What will come now? Further research will surely reveal whether the Rendlesham site is a hedge temple of Raedwald – with altars to both the old pagan gods, as well as the “new” Christian one – as described by Bede. And there is no correct answer as to who was lying in Muine Two (the only possibility is the son of Raedwald who was killed in battle). But whatever the soil of Suffolk throws up next, the story will continue, a distant era seeping into our own pool.
Fundamentals
Tickets to Sutton Hoo (01394 389 700) cost from £15 per adult. The museums are only open at weekends in winter; the entire site is open all year round.
