Day 8 - When isn't it rainy in England?

Today we made lunches and piled into the car for the long drive to Sutton Hoo, near Suffolk on the east coast of England. The day itself was cold, windy, and very rainy. It is owned by the National Trust, but is extremely hard to find. The signs, rather than being the usual large green signs, were tiny and yellow. We thought for sure that no one would be there except for us, especially because of the rain.

But it seems that the English enjoy the rain; the car park was full and there were British tourists everywhere at Sutton Hoo. A bit daunted by the rain but not ready to let the Brits beat us, we parked and climbed out of the car. Of course, we didn’t forget our umbrellas, the quintessential tools in Great Britain.

Back during the reign of King Henry VIII, farmers found what resembled large rusted nails at the base of one of the many mounds in the field of what would be known as Sutton Hoo. Henry saw himself as a patron of treasure hunting and gave permission for digging to start in the field. Apparently, the remains of a large ship, full of treasure and some human remains, was discovered near the nails. To the chagrin of historians today, all the treasure was plundered and the site refilled. For a few hundred years Sutton Hoo remained untouched.

In the early 1930s, the sister of a woman who now owned the fields reported seeing ghostly figures hovering near the mounds. Intrigued, the owner hired an archeologist in 1936 to come and begin excavations of the mounds. Out of fourteen total mounds, one was excavated.

Though the mound had mostly caved in and flattened all it contained, many things were still salvageable. The stain of another ship was found in the soil, along with treasures beyond the diggers’ imaginations, and the remains of a body. Beautiful helmets, gold belt buckles, swords, and shoulder plates were among the gems. Slowly the story was pieced together; the ship was dragged from the nearby river and buried under the mound in a burial ritual. Everyone was excited to work on the other mounds.

But the Second World War began and halted all progress. After the work on the first mound was finished, the excavation was filled and the bumpy field of Sutton Hoo was used for tank exercises, doing who knows how much damage to what lay beneath. Finally, in 1980, excavations began once again at Sutton Hoo.

By this time carbon dating on many of the objects found in the 1930s dated the burial to the early 600s, the Anglo-Saxon era in British history. The man buried in the ship was likely King Raedwald, the first Christian king. To put the Anglo-Saxons in their proper place on the timeline, after the Romans left the Anglo-Saxons arrived from the icy countries of the north, and later the Vikings would arrive to wipe out the Anglo-Saxons. It was during the Anglo-Saxon era that the epic poem Beowulf was written.

Two other mounds in particular offered some excitement: one was the one originally excavated during the reign of Henry VIII, and the other that of a warrior buried next to his horse. Various other burial sites were found in the area as well – full cremation bowls, child burials, etc. A gallows and the graves of supposed criminals from a later period were also found. Dating to the later Christian era, historians believe that it was considered an awful punishment for a criminal to find his final resting place amongst ancient pagans.

The museum at Sutton Hoo was fantastic, showcasing some replicas of the treasures (the real ones are in the British Museum in London) and giving a great deal of history of the Anglo-Saxon people. When we had finished in the museum we braved the rain for a walk around the mounds themselves. Sheep graze on them now.

It was quite exciting to walk around the sites of such ancient burials, dating back over 1,400 years ago. Perhaps there were still unexcavated burials, right beneath our feet. With every new discovery will come a new window on the life of those people, who disappeared with the arrival of the Vikings. Were the Saxons slaughtered, or simply absorbed into the population of foreign arrivals? Knowing the Vikings, it was probably the former.

Though we originally planned to do more than one thing today, Sutton Hoo took us twice as long as we budgeted for it. So we ate our lunch at the car and decided to meet Daddy and Miss Leshinski at the RAF Mildenhall Exchange for some shopping. I bought some gifts for people back at home, and everyone had dinner in the food court.

We arrived home at St. Neot’s at 10PM and began packing up our stuff to move the next morning. Sadly we were only able to rent The Garden House for one week, and have to move to The Cottage, which it much smaller but it still comfortable. Slowly everyone tired and fell asleep.