620s

Sutton Hoo: a king's ship under a mound

Story 3 of 5

At Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, in the east of England, lies the grave of an Anglo-Saxon king. When he died, he was laid in a ship together with treasure and armour, and the ship was buried under a huge mound of earth.

The Sutton Hoo dig in 1939: the outline of a large ship and rows of rivets showing in the sand — The dig in 1939. The wood had rotted away long before, leaving only the "print" of the ship in the sand and rows of iron rivets. Still from a home movie by Harold John Phillips, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The mound was opened in 1939, when the landowner Edith Pretty asked Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist, to dig into it. He found a ship about 27 metres long. The acid soil had eaten away all the wood, but almost every iron rivet was still in place, so archaeologists could trace the shape of the whole ship from them.

Nobody wrote down the dead king's name. The most likely candidate is Rædwald, King of East Anglia, who died in the 620s. The dig itself later became a 2021 Netflix film, The Dig.

A replica of the Sutton Hoo helmet: an iron helmet with a full face mask, with the eyebrows and nose decorated in gold — A **replica** of the Sutton Hoo helmet. The original was found broken into hundreds of pieces. It has been put back together and is in the British Museum. Photo: Gernot Keller, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Quiz

Sutton Hoo is the burial place of an Anglo-Saxon king who was buried in a ship. In which modern county is it?

Era contents: 500 – 1000