JACQ BARNARD: 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. But we can hopefully at least rule some of those things

out.

JAMES GRASBY : Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall

of history? Join me for an inside view of the stories of

people, places and moments that made us.

I'm historian James Grasby. Lean in for a tale from time. Back

When.

Buried treasure isn't always gold and jewels. Sometimes it's

something far older, far stranger, and far closer to

home.

Here in Suffolk, in the East of England, the soil is sandy and

acidic, not the kind of ground you'd expect to preserve

history. And yet, 1,400 years ago, something extraordinary

happened here.

A community gathered, a ship was hauled from the river, and a

king, their king, was laid to rest inside it.

Today I'm visiting this ancient site to trace the contours of

that story, to walk where they might have walked, and to

imagine 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-foot oak ship that had

been buried there.

Now inside the ship was a carefully curated burial chamber

for a well-respected king, King Rædwald of the Wuffing 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 hangar 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 Ships Company. Shall we go and have a look inside?

JAMES GRASBY : Yes, please.

That. It's 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 feet 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 principal 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 : A very dominant and striking feature about the

design is this regular punctuation along the length of

the vessel of these metal rivets.

JACQ BARNARD: 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-

JACQ BARNARD: I can tell you there are 3,598 of those in

there. That's an awful lot of hammering required.

JAMES GRASBY : The enthusiasm and vigour 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.

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 : Well, 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 had a bit of a look and to see what

journey may have happened?

JAMES GRASBY : Absolutely stunning.

JACQ BARNARD: Okay, let's go.

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

JAMES GRASBY : How do you do, Brian?

BRIAN: Hello, James. Nice 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 woolen 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 7th century, the time of

King Rædwald 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 have you going out onto the water just in 21st

century clothes?

So to start with, we're going to give you a woolen tunic, and

then we'll put one of these wraparound 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'll 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.

Now Matt we've left Bawdsey 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 6th and 7th 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 European trade, 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 Rædwald?

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

kings of other southern kingdoms as well. So kings of Essex,

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

he was a 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 you would choose to

bury your king in a boat?

MATT: It's making that really important. 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 Rædwald so rich and powerful, but 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 Rædwald into whatever lies

beyond.

JAMES GRASBY : 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 metres across. We'd be a long way from one

another.

But we would also be expected to row in unison because in order

for 20 rowers 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 : Come on, 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 royal

vessel of the size that we're talking about.

So the assumption has to be that these are men who are framed for

rowing, retained as rowers.

They probably had other duties as well. They may have been what

we call'gesith'. They would be people who would own lands that

were given to them by the king. 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 up 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 in there into Woodbridge with a modern marina

and some clearly more industrial buildings.

MATT: And the land rises around us as well. We've figured out

it's been very sort of flat and level. And the bit that we're

coming up to now is where we assumed 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 at

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 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.

LAURA HOWARTH: Yes!

JAMES GRASBY : 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 is 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 Tun means place or

settlement. 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.

JAMES GRASBY : On the river?

LAURA HOWARTH: 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 wasn't kind of a 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, up

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 as close

to what we think is kind of possible today.

JAMES GRASBY : Down underneath this grass is a very dry, sandy,

soil and 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 all the organic materials, that's just

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 a 30 or 40 meters?

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. They're 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 we're 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 going to 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-West orientation facing out

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

think is just such an important part of the burial layout.

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

LAURA HOWARTH: What we're doing is 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 the 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

mastercrafted 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 toolkit 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 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 Sutton

Hoo 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 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 ploughed 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: I'll just unhook the rope and let you in.

JAMES GRASBY : Thank you very much.

LAURA HOWARTH: This is for our guided tours, so just kind of

minimising footfall and the erosion on the burial grounds.

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

It is!

A guided tour?

LAURA HOWARTH: 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 : And 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, so to say, I invented a game where you chip from mound

one to mound two, from mound two to mound three, four, five, six,

seven, 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 if you spend long enough peering at the

ground, how you can start to feel the microgeography, 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 Rædwald'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 onto the next

life.

And over there, which is again no longer really visible as a

mound, Mound 14, the only high-status female burial that

we found here. That could have been Rædwald'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.

But during Professor Martin Carver's excavations, 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 7th century

burials that had so much care and reverence afforded to them.

These people were deviant burials, we think, ways 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's not over. It's been fascinating.

Laura, thank you very much indeed.

Standing here in the courtyard, looking at the full-sized

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 carries.

And that's what I love about it. It's a story that is still being

written, a story still being spun.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of Back When. Please do

rate, review and follow us on your favourite podcaster. And

why not check out our nature podcast, Wild Tales, with Rosie

Holdsworth. And I'll be back soon with another tale from

time. I hope to see you then.