JAMES GRASBY: Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast.

I'm James Grasby, building and landscapes curator for the

National Trust. And today, I'm in Suffolk in the east of

England, to learn more about a discovery found under layers of

acidic sandy soil.

Some 1400 years ago, a community came together to haul a ship

from a river within which they were to bury their King. And

today we're going to reimagine what that final journey was

really like.

Now, I've arrived at a boatyard in Woodbridge and I can see

across the river, the wooded banks beyond which are Sutton

Hoo where in 1939 a local archaeologist called Basil Brown

uncovered the ghostly shape of an 86 ft oak ship that had been

buried there. Now, inside the ship was a carefully curated

burial chamber for a well respected King, King Redwald of

the woofing dynasty.

But why did they bury the ship and how did it get there? If I

turn around, I can now see some large buildings that look like a

cross between an airplane hanger and a warehouse and inside one

of those buildings, there's a full size replica being built

plank by plank, and that's going to help us answer some of these

questions.

JACQ BARNARD: Hi. Are you James?

JAMES GRASBY: How do you do?

JACQ BARNARD: I'm Jacq Barnard. I'm the project manager from the

Sutton Hoo Ship's Company. Shall we go and have a look inside?

JAMES GRASBY: Yes, please.

That is an enormous boat. I had no idea how huge it is!

We're looking at the side of this vessel and you've got the

oak keel that runs the full length, but the principal shape

is given by a superstructure which really defines the shape

of this long, lean, sleek pointed at both ends, huge boat.

I mean, I could park four family cars along the keel, nose to

tail and still have room for a couple of minis at either end.

JACQ BARNARD: Well, I could take you up to one of our end

platforms and we can have a look at it from above?

JAMES GRASBY: Right, we're just climbing up to an elevated

platform that I guess is about 10 ft above the ground, and

we're not even as high as the prow of this ship.

JACQ BARNARD: When you see it elevated and being built in this

kind of magnitude, it is just breathtaking. Our principle here

is if we don't know what the Anglo Saxons done, we will

always go back in time rather than forward. So the saw which

we knew the Romans used, wasn't used by the Anglo Saxons. So as

much as possible, we are using their methods and their tools to

try and understand exactly how they built this ship 1400 years

ago.

JAMES GRASBY: So whereabouts have you got to in the process

of rebuilding this boat?

JACQ BARNARD: Our plan is that we get two planks on a week,

we're on track. So by the end of this year, we hope to have the

whole hull planked so it would look like a ship, but it won't

have any insides. So the following year will all be about

making sure that the frames are in place, that we've worked out

how the flooring will be fitted, how the seating will be put

in...

JAMES GRASBY: Very sort of dominant and striking feature

about the design is this regular punctuation along the length of

the vessel of these metal rivets.

JACQ BARNARD: You know, if, if it weren't for these rivets, we

wouldn't be building this ship because when they excavated the

site up at Sutton Hoo, it was the rivets that remained in the

sand in the ground in the right places, which allowed us to

convert that archaeological information into a modern day

plan.

JAMES GRASBY: Because there was something particular about the

geology of the site that caused the wood to decay and disappear,

but the metal to remain?

JACQ BARNARD: That's spot on.

JAMES GRASBY: I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of these

metal rivets.

JACQ BARNARD: I can tell you there are 3598 of those in

there.

JAMES GRASBY: Wow

JACQ BARNARD: That's an awful lot of hammering required.

JAMES GRASBY: The enthusiasm and vigor is to be seen everywhere.

You've got a few more years of work to do, and then what

happens?

JACQ BARNARD: Spring 2025 is when we hope to get it on the

water and then we're going to incrementally trial it. But one

of the reasons we're building this is to find out what it was

capable of and what it may have been used for and why it might

have been used as a burial ship. Why was it held in such high

esteem? Because to this day, we don't know whether it was a

cargo ship, a cruising ship or a warship, you know, but we can

hopefully at least rule some of those things out because if it

doesn't perform like a warship, then it wasn't used as a

warship. So they're the kind of things that we're going to be

looking at to try and help the historians answer some of those

age old questions that they've always been around.

JAMES GRASBY: This is an enormous enterprise.

JACQ BARNARD: The ship really is just the beginning, isn't it? So

what we've got out there is the beautiful river Deben which must

have been the playground of this original ship. So don't you

think it would be a good idea if we went out onto the river

ourselves and, and had a bit of a look and see what journey may

have happened?

JAMES GRASBY: I think that would be absolutely stunning

JACQ BARNARD: Ok, let's go.

James, this is Brian, who's our skipper for the day.

JAMES GRASBY: How do you do, Brian?

BRIAN: Hello, James, pleased to meet you. Sorry about the

weather today! I hope you don't mind, I've brought somebody else

along who I think will be able to help you reimagine the

journey.

MATT: Hello, I'm Matt.

JAMES GRASBY: I have to say you are a formidable looking figure.

You're wearing a warm pinky red woollen cloak and a tunic and a

fabulous hat.

MATT: I'm wearing it because I'm a member of Wulfheodenas, which

is a living history organisation that concentrates on recreating

the material culture of the people of that time. This is the

sort of thing that somebody of reasonably high status would be

wearing in the early seventh century at the time of King

Redwald and the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

JAMES GRASBY: It's very striking. I wonder if you've got

any gear for me?

MATT: Can't be going out onto the water just in 21st century

clothes. So to start with, we're going to give you a woollen

tunic and then we'll put one of these wrap around coats over the

top of that and then a cloak over the top of that and we'll

get you a hat as well and you will be ready for an adventure

on the Deben.

JAMES GRASBY: You are kind

MATT: I'm also carrying this rather large horn that you can

see. The end is sawn off because it's a sounding horn rather than

a drinking horn.

JAMES GRASBY: Matt I think we should sound that now to start

our journey.

I think they heard that.

Matt we've left Bawsdey Quay behind in a very small,

clinker-built, wooden boat, in the water that is timeless, the

way the waves are breaking over the bow of this wooden vessel.

MATT: The landscape that we see, the hills that we see in the

distance as we move further up the river, is exactly the same

landscape as we would have seen in the sixth and the seventh

century.

JAMES GRASBY: These are the sensations and the sights that

somebody entering this river at that period would have felt.

Actually as I understand it, we're closer here to mainland

Europe than I am to my home in Worcestershire. This must have

been a meeting place of seafarers.

MATT: Definitely, I think particularly once we start to

see the development of Kingdoms, of power centres, and that's

something that the Deben is particularly important for. It's

a highway for, for European trade, for cross channel trade,

and trade from much further away as well, even as far as like the

Byzantine Empire and then beyond into China. And it's also kind

of a highway for people migrating into the country.

JAMES GRASBY: Now, Matt, tell me who was King Redwald.

MATT: Redwald, he ruled East Anglia but he held power over

kings of other Southern Kingdoms as well, so kings of Essex and

possibly Kent, Sussex and possibly even Wessex as well. So

he was very important, King.

JAMES GRASBY: Brian, our captain has turned the engine off and we

are mid-channel, silence in this timeless wooden boat. What I'm

fascinated about Matt, is why will you choose to bury your

King in a boat?

MATT: It's making that really important statement saying here

is a powerful man. Here is a true King amongst kings and it's

his family stamping their authorities - this is how

important we are. Not only was Redwald so rich and powerful and

he deserves to have all of these things buried with him, but we

as his descendants are so rich and powerful that we can give

them up to the ground to go with Redwald into whatever lies

beyond.

JAMES GRASBY: But it's a formidable prospect. Jacq,

you're also a very experienced rower in your own. right - We're

sitting on a thwart broadly speaking, which is a transverse

bench on which a rower would sit and then there would be two oars

people would there on either side on the same bench?

JACQ BARNARD: But remember that the ship is very wide in the

centre, it's 4.8 m across - we would be a long way from one

another. But we would also be expected to row in unison

because in order for 20 rows on each side to move at the same

time, they have all got to go in the water and come out of the

water at the same point. If not, they'll start to clash with one

another.

JAMES GRASBY: And tell me, Matt, who were these Anglo Saxon

rowers?

MATT: You can't just put anybody into any boat and expect them to

be able to row efficiently. And even more so when it's like a

royal vessel of the size that we're talking about. So the

assumption has to be that these are men who are trained for

rowing, retained as rowers. They probably had other duties as

well, they may have been what we call a'gesith'- They would be

people who would own lands that were given to them by the King,

and they would perform military service for the King.

JAMES GRASBY: Fascinating. We're drifting, fire up the motor!

we're off.

And the waves are breaking over the bow. We're going into the

wind and I guess there's a little bit of tide that is

wanting to push us out to sea too. But picturing taking that

vessel, rowing would be very hard work...

The estuary was really quite broad when we started, and it's

narrowing down and there is Woodbridge with a modern marina

and some clearly more industrial buildings.

MATT: And the land rises around us as well as we move up. It's

been very sort of flat and level and the bit that we're coming up

to now is where we assume that the ship itself would have been

moored before it was then dragged out of the water and

hauled the half mile up to the burial mounds of Sutton Hoo.

JAMES GRASBY: It's been an encounter with history.

We're slowing down now so we must be getting pretty near our

destination - Sutton Hoo.

I've left Jacq and Matt and have come to the bank beneath Sutton

Hoo.

There is a public footpath here along the bank and I can just

see a very steep hill and some woodland to one side. I'm here

to meet Laura, who's going to help me understand what happened

once the ship got to this very point. I can see her. Laura.

LAURA HOWARTH: Hello. Nice to meet you.

JAMES GRASBY: I'm very pleased to meet you.

LAURA HOWARTH: I'm Laura and I'm the archaeology and engagement

manager here at National Trust Sutton Hoo.

JAMES GRASBY: Couldn't be more thrilled to be here. The rain

has stopped.

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes! Welcome to Sutton Hoo.

JAMES GRASBY: Now look, I'm feeling a bit daunted. We've

recreated this journey from the mouth of the river Deben to

here. This was the beginning of the great haul of that ship -

from here?

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes. Sutton Hoo is a place name in Old English,

which is the language of the Anglo Saxons. The Sutton bit

means southern and Ton means place or settlements. And then a

Hoo is a raised area of land often overlooking water and that

exactly describes where we are and we're going to be heading up

one of the Hoos to where the Royal Burial Ground is situated.

JAMES GRASBY: And in terms of this moment, the ship has been

beached, I suppose, in this squashy mud?

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes

JAMES GRASBY: So conceivably, there would have been spectators

on both sides of the river? There would have been other

vessels, perhaps?

LAURA HOWARTH: Possibly Yes. Yes. And it would have been, we

think over a course of several days. Possible funeral feasts as

well - the kind of the ceremony. This is, wasn't the kind of

funerary practice that would have been afforded to everyone.

There are only three Anglo Saxon ship burials that we know of in

the whole of England and there are two here at Sutton Hoo and

one nearby at Snape.

JAMES GRASBY: You've then got an enormous problem. I mean, it's

hard enough to launch a ship going with gravity but to pull

it out of the water across these sort of muddy surfaces of this

bank, across this berm up here.

LAURA HOWARTH: It's something quite alien to us today, I guess

dragging a huge ship just by the means that they had. But various

theories include a lot of manpower first and foremost, and

ropes, potentially these trees being used as rollers to get us

up there and potentially even livestock as well being used.

But it would have been a phenomenal feat.

JAMES GRASBY: So Laura, we're out of the mud, we've got a bit

of a journey to go now, haven't we?

LAURA HOWARTH: We do. So we don't know exactly the route

that the ship would have taken, but we're going to do is close

to what we think is kind of possible today.

JAMES GRASBY: Underneath this grass is a very dry sandy soil.

I can imagine that being quite a sort of slick surface over to

which you could drag it quite readily.

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes, we have quite acidic soil here in

Suffolk.

The soil type means that there isn't a ship to see at Sutton

Hoo today because over time water seeping in, created an

acid bath which then dissolved kind of all the organic

materials such as the timber of the ship, the body that was

placed in it. And what was uncovered in 1939 by

archaeologists such as Basil Brown and Charles Phillips was

actually a fossil of a ship.

JAMES GRASBY: Laura we've emerged with some lovely

woodland into a much more open landscape, but nevertheless, the

ground is rising. I guess we've got 30 or 40 m?

LAURA HOWARTH: We're nearly there, but we are on the

steepest kind of part of the incline now, just imagining the

people hauling the effort to get this ship up there. And

meanwhile, people are preparing the actual kind of burial

itself.

JAMES GRASBY: Were slaves part of the picture?

LAURA HOWARTH: Quite possibly. Yeah. The Anglo Saxons did have

slaves. We know slaves were part of their culture and also were

slaves themselves as well.

JAMES GRASBY: I tell you what, I was rather sorry when I had to

take off my Anglo Saxon clothes, they protected me very well in

the boat. But I was very struck by the colour, the vivid,

vibrant colours, I mean, almost sort of 1970s, retro and groovy.

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes, a lot of the time people refer to this period

as the dark ages, but it couldn't be further from the

truth. It was a very vibrant time and we know that they used

natural dyes to create a rich rainbow of colour.

And that is one of the things that's worth thinking about, you

know, in terms of the ship, the level of Sutton Hoo

craftsmanship, and thinking about other Anglo Saxon stone

sculptures that were painted, it could have been carved, it could

have had decorative panels.

JAMES GRASBY: The trees are thinning and this path winding

its way through them. And we're beginning to get a glimpse of

that soft pillow shape on the horizon.

LAURA HOWARTH: This is where we're gonna put the ship that

we've been dragging up the hill. This is mound one and then we'll

set about furnishing the ship and the burial chamber ready to

heap over the soil to create this beautiful mound.

JAMES GRASBY: Now, Laura, which way was the ship facing?

LAURA HOWARTH: So it's this East to West orientation, facing out

to the river and that connection to the North Sea, we think is

just such an important part of the kind of burial layout.

JAMES GRASBY: Take me through the process of burying a boat.

LAURA HOWARTH: What we're doing is kind of furnishing a burial

chamber in the middle. The King would have been laid out in

there. Some people think that he was buried in a tree trunk

coffin. Other theories suggest that he was lying kind of supine

on the base of the ship. And then it's a process of adding in

the objects that not only represent him in life but also

would have had a purpose, a statement for him in death as

well.

263 objects that were going to be used into the next life. So

we've got a weaponry, the iconic Sutton Hoo Helmet, a wonderful

master crafted pattern welded sword. So that kind of regalia,

that ceremonial aspect. We've got feasting equipment,

entertainment in the form of a lyre and gaming pieces.

JAMES GRASBY: So not simply a basic tool kit for the

afterlife.

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes, many of these things might have been

specifically made for burial. There were some things included

for a practical purpose, but some things were very much for

the statement of power.

The Anglo Saxons at this time in East Anglia are predominantly

pagan, but we are very much at that transition point. So we've

got influences coming in from the East, Christianity coming

through, through Kent and spreading. And we also have

Christianity to the West thinking about Ireland and

Scotland as well.

JAMES GRASBY: So what a remarkable discovery for the

archaeologist Basil Brown in 1939. Staggering.

LAURA HOWARTH: We say that this is a discovery that changed

history. That it truly revolutionised our understanding

of who these people were, what they were capable of - the

amazing craftsmanship. Everything found here at here is

an expression of what it was to be an Anglo Saxon and what they

were capable of.

JAMES GRASBY: Laura, what is intoxicatingly striking is the

geometry of it, that we've got this dark foreground and this

hemisphere like a rising planet of this, of this mound on the

horizon set against this wonderful sky that you only get

in this part of the world, I think. But why here at Sutton

Hoo?

LAURA HOWARTH: Archaeology is a bit like having a jigsaw puzzle

box. We've got some of the pieces, but we haven't got the

picture on the back. So a lot of the time, what we're doing is

looking at the evidence that we have, seeing how it fits

together and coming up with theories.

There's still so much to learn about Sutton Hoo, so much

research that we're still carrying out today to uncover

other bits of the story. We think there are around 18 burial

mounds here.

JAMES GRASBY: 18?

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes. Some of them have been plowed down to almost

on the flat. So, shall we go and explore some of the other people

buried here?

JAMES GRASBY: Yes please. Laura, this feels like a great

privilege to be going over the barrier. It's got a little rope

here.

LAURA HOWARTH: So I'll just unhook the rope and let you in.

So this is for our guided tours. So just kind of minimizing

footfall and the erosion on the burial grounds.

JAMES GRASBY: So, Laura, that's one of the groups to our left, a

guided tour.

LAURA HOWARTH: It is, and actually, we're going to head

over to Mound 17.

JAMES GRASBY: And every step we take, a grasshopper leaps out in

front of us.

LAURA HOWARTH: A carpet that's alive with wildlife.

JAMES GRASBY: Mound 17 looks in comparison to mound one, pretty

modest. It's pretty flat.

LAURA HOWARTH: It is. So this was one of the very last things

that was discovered during the 1980s campaign and it was

actually found, purely by chance, by Professor Martin

Carver at the end of his excavation season, believe it or

not, whilst he was playing golf.

MARTIN CARVER: When we took over the site, we were conscious that

the site had been raided on a previous occasion. So we put the

site under 24 hour guard.

I did my stint, I was a lone guard surrounded by a lot of

mounds and being a golfer, not a very good one but a keen golfer

it's safe to say, I invented a game where you chip from Mound

One to Mound Two, from Mound Two to Mound 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and so

on. Thus, helping me learn the geography of the site, and also

try and improve my chipping skills.

There was a Mound 12 which was just under a tree and I always

fell short. But interestingly enough, the ball always rolled

off what it landed in and eventually I twigged that there

must have been another mound there. That's the only reason

why the ball would have rolled off where there wasn't

apparently a mound to roll off.

And that turned out to be Mound 17. You know, I wouldn't

recommend it in general, but it is amazing how you, you know, if

you spend long enough peering at the ground, how you can start to

feel the micro-geography which is hiding what you're looking

for.

JAMES GRASBY: What was actually found here?

LAURA HOWARTH: So we've got two graves in front of us and one

possible theory is this is Redwald's son and he was buried

with everything that you would think of for a warrior. Moving

over to the next grave, it's a horse.

So his horse, we believe, to accompany him on to the next

life and over there, which is again, no longer really visible

as a mound, Mound 14, is the only high status female burial

that we found here. That could have been Redwald's Queen.

Unfortunately, we'll never know for certain.

JAMES GRASBY: So what you're saying was this was exclusively

a family burial site?

LAURA HOWARTH: The Royal Burial Ground is a really important

part of our Sutton Hoo stories, but there are other chapters

that are equally as interesting and fascinating.

So during Professor Martin Carver's excavation, they also

found 39 sand bodies. Again, the acidity of the soil means they

were shadowed kind of stains in the soil and quite an

interesting juxtaposition to the seventh century burials that had

so much care and reverence afforded to them, these people

were deviant burials we think with kind of wrists and ankles

being bound, heads cut off, shallow graves, very gruesome.

And I think it just shows there's so much that we still

don't know about Sutton Hoo, and ongoing research. So today,

we're using a lot of non invasive techniques and

technology to see what that can tell us and add further chapters

to our Sutton Hoo story.

JAMES GRASBY: The story is not over. It's been fascinating,

Laura, thank you very much indeed.

Standing here in the courtyard looking at the full size

sculpture of the great ship they have here. It's inspiring to

think of what the Anglo Saxons achieved at Sutton Hoo. It

really shows the commitment and the ceremony and the importance,

in preparing their dead for the afterlife. And the sheer feat of

strength and engineering to enable that to happen is

incredibly impressive.

And once the full size replica ship is built and river worthy,

we'll gain even more insight into this magnificent vessel and

those she carried. And that's what I love about it - It's a

story that is still being written, a story still being

spun.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Trust

podcast. If you'd like to learn more about Sutton who or the

building of the Great ship replica, we've included

information and links in this episode's show net to make sure

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Spotify, Google podcasts or Apple podcast. We'll be back

soon. But for now from me, James Graspy, goodbye.