History of Sutton Hoo

The Sutton Hoo Society: A brief historical outline.

The Society is a registered charity, which was founded in 1984 to support and further the work of Professor Martin Carver's ground–breaking excavations of the Anglo-Saxon royal burial site in Suffolk. Following the completion of the Sutton Hoo Research Project’s work, the Society continued to run guided tours on the site, with the permission of the then landowner, Annie Tranmer.  Following her death, ownership of the site was transferred to the National Trust, and the Society worked closely with the National Trust and other groups to enable the site to be opened to the public. This finally was achieved in 2002 when Seamus Heaney, Nobel prize-winner and translator of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, officially opened the visitor centre.

The Society continues to run the guiding programme at Sutton Hoo in association with the National Trust and works closely with them to further enhance the visitor experience through, for example, granting funds towards display material and funding a handling collection of objects from the Mound 1 excavation.

The other main work of the Society is to advance knowledge of Sutton Hoo and the wider kingdom of the East Angles through the promotion and funding of research and public education. The Society is delighted to have been able to offer grant aid to a number of related organisations to enable this to happen.

To see how the Society has supported such work go to: Grants

For further information on the advantages of joining the society please go to: Join

For more detailed information consult the select Bibliography & Links.

Sutton Hoo: the background to the site and its importance.

The importance of Sutton Hoo is vested in the un-disturbed burial deposit excavated by Basil Brown in 1939 within the remains of the great ship found beneath a large burial mound. The grave-goods in the burial revealed the nature of elite life in the Anglo-Saxon period and the culture and art they practised. At the time of their discovery the finds changed the then accepted view of what life had been like in the Anglo-Saxon period.

The Anglo-Saxon period extends from about AD 410 to 1066. The Benedictine monk Bede, writing in the early 8th century in Northumbria, identified the English as the descendants of three Germanic tribes:

· the Angles, who probably came from the area called Angeln in the South Danish peninsula

· the Saxons, from North Germany and Holland

· the Jutes, possibly from Jutland. (Denmark and North Germany)

These groups of people had begun to cross from mainland Europe during the 4th and 5th centuries – a period referred to as the Migration Period. They probably came in larger numbers following the withdrawal of the Roman army and administration after 410 AD, when Rome itself was sacked by the Visigothic leader Alaric and his army, and the Roman Empire went into a state of collapse.

At this point, society changed and in the province of Britannia, now outside the Roman Empire and its military and administrative support, moved into a period often referred to in the past as ‘The Dark Ages’. The term is contentious, but it is clear that the economy collapsed, and we have limited evidence of what life was like in the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxons did not write, thus knowledge of them relies on other sources, particularly archaeology. However in the last 50 years research has shed much light onto the period, and we can see Sutton Hoo as having its place in what was, in the late 6th to 7th century a golden age.

During the 5th and 6th centuries the country had become divided up into a series of territories, which by the time of Sutton Hoo are identified as kingdoms. Sutton Hoo lay within the kingdom of the East Angles and is linked to the important power centre of its kings recently uncovered at Rendlesham. These kings belonged to the dynastic family of the Wuffings, and they claimed descent from the kings of Sweden.

The Anglo-Saxons were pagan, believing that the possessions they used in their earthly life would also be required in the life hereafter. At Sutton Hoo, they buried their dead beneath mounds, and with them their personal belongings, their weaponry and war gear, as well their domestic and household equipment. The burials comprise both cremations and inhumations, males as well as females.

In 1938 Basil Brown was commissioned by the owner of the site, Edith Pretty, to excavate three of the burial mounds on her property at Sutton Hoo. The results indicated that the burials dated from the Anglo-Saxon period, and had contained the remains of elite members of society. All three of the mounds had been robbed out in the past, but the remaining remnants indicated wealth, prestige, and contacts (perhaps by trade) with people beyond the immediate area – as far as the eastern Mediterranean. Considerable investment of time and labour had gone into the burials. Mound 2 it was realised, had contained a ship – only the second Anglo-Saxon ship-burial to be found in England. The first, from a burial mound at nearby Snape, had been excavated by antiquarians in the 19^th century. The finds, in Aldeburgh Museum, were used by Basil Brown to confirm his discoveries from Mound 2. Sutton Hoo Mounds 3 and 4 were cremation burials, with fragments of objects with ‘exotic’ origin, that is, from beyond these shores.

In 1939, Basil returned to excavate Mound 1, the largest on the site at that time. The remains of another, much larger ship were found. The rivets which had held together the wooden planking had remained in situ. The planks (strakes) had rotted away but left their traces in the sand in the form of a dark stain and a crusty layer. Amidships within the ship was a collapsed but otherwise undisturbed burial chamber, which contained the grave-goods which comprise the great treasure of Sutton Hoo. Basil Brown had by then been joined by the archaeological team drawn together by Charles Phillips of Cambridge University, and “In an exhilarating seventeen days Phillips’s team emptied the burial chamber of 263 objects of gold, garnet, silver, bronze, enamel, iron, wood, bone, textiles, feathers and fur. There was even a ladybird and the crushed remains of a flowering plant.” (M. Carver, 1998, p. 18)

The question of who was buried in Mound One remains uncertain but the evidence suggests it was Raedwald, king of the East Angles. He came from the family of the Wuffingas (the followers of Wuffa). Historical sources indicate that the first king, Wehha (c. 550-60 AD)was succeeded about AD 570 by his son Wuffa. Tyttla succeeded Wuffa and Raedwald succeeded him in AD 593. It is unclear when Raedwald was born but best guess suggests between 560 and 580. He became king of the East Angles as a young man and in AD 616, on the death of King Ethelbert of Kent, became the Bretwalda, senior king in England. He died in AD 624 or 625, at the age of between 44 and 64, dependant on the accepted date of his birth. No other Anglo-Saxon King reigned for any considerable period of years, which coupled with the richness and value of the grave goods, the dating of the coins in the burial and his high standing as Bretwalda, suggests that it was Raedwald who was buried in Mound One at Sutton Hoo.