Biography
Journey with us into the often brutal world of the Anglo-Saxon conquests. We tell the story of Sutton Hoo's discovery, and look at how the helmet was restored.
Sutton Hoo: The Basics
Discovered in 1939, the age, size and completeness of the Sutton Hoo site in Suffolk made it one of the most remarkable finds in England.
The Discovery of the Ship
During the late 1930s, the Sutton Hoo estate belonged to Mrs Edith Pretty. Her house overlooked a cluster of about 20 ancient burial mounds covered with bracken and gorse. Not surprisingly, Mrs Pretty was curious about the mounds and in 1937 approached Ipswich Museum, which agreed to send over its archaeologist, Basil Brown, to take a look…
The First English
In the fifth century AD, the Roman Empire in the west collapsed, as waves of Germanic peoples swept over the borders to raid, conquer and settle. The invaders who crossed the sea to Britain were called Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians - collectively known today as Anglo-Saxons. These were the first English people.
The Helmet Restored
The Sutton Hoo helmet was found shattered into more than 100 pieces - damage caused when the timber roof of the burial chamber collapsed. The pieces were mostly rusty iron, though there were also fragments of tinned bronze decorative panels, and a crest inlaid with silver wire. Putting the helmet together was like solving a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, with the added difficulty that many of the pieces were missing.
