Buried Treasure 17

Hello. In previous sessions I've looked at some spectacular Anglo-Saxon finds and I want to include one more. In 2003 the Museum of London were conducting a survey in advance of a road widening scheme near Priory Park, Prittlewell, South End in Essex. Now Prittlewell was originally the main settlement and South End was literally the South End of Prittlewell but over time South End grew into the main urban centre. Prittlewell is now just a northern district of South End. But it's known there was Anglo-Saxon occupation at Prittlewell and in the parish church at St Mary's there is still some Anglo-Saxon fabric. The museum were not expecting to find very much but they popped in an exploratory trench over a mound and they just struck lucky. They discovered a 13-foot square timber-lined burial chamber. The sides had fallen in and the ceiling had collapsed and it had filled with earth but the contents were very well preserved apart from the body and some 110 objects were recovered before the site had been fully recorded and then backfilled. The contents are not quite as lavish as the finds at Sutton Hoo but it's getting into that that sort of sphere. Amongst the items deposited to accompany the occupant into the afterlife there was a decorated hanging bowl. There was a flagon. Now this has come from the Middle East, probably somewhere like Syria. There was a folding stool. Now this style is called a chair. They were power symbols in ancient Rome and copied through to modern times but this is a unique find for Britain so again possibly imported. There were tubs or buckets made of three staves with iron bands. There were drinking vessels. There was a gold belt buckle. There were two frankish gold coins. From the position they'd been held one in each hand and there was a sword. A good indication that the occupant was male and metal fittings and garnet decoration from a lyre. Now the woodwork had decomposed but it left the most complete impression of an Anglo-Saxon lyre ever discovered in Britain. So clear you could even see where repairs had been made. The body had been laid to rest in a wooden coffin and that enabled the archaeologists to estimate that the man in the coffin had been around five feet eight inches tall and two small gold crosses, just gold foil, had been laid over his eyes. Now grave goods, a pagan practice, but crosses were Christian so a confusing juxtaposition and one theory that's been put forward is that maybe the body was placed in the coffin by Christians but it was then buried by pagans. All that remained of the body were fragments of the teeth. The rest decomposed in the acidic soil and the teeth were too decayed to allow DNA analysis but they did show that this man was an adult. The carbon date was very strong and it's centred on 580 AD. So this is almost two decades before Saint Augustine's mission sent by Pope Gregory to convert the Anglo-Saxons. But we know that Queen Bertha of Kent, of Frankish origins, was a Christian. Now she married King Uthelbert of Kent in 580 and the condition of the marriage was that she be allowed to practice her religion and she brought with her her own chaplain, a man called Ludard, and the former Roman church just outside Canterbury, Saint Martin's, was restored for Bertha and there is still some Roman tile incorporated in the walling of the chancel. Who is the man who was laid to rest at Prittlewell? The quality of the objects found, both those local objects and the imported objects, say royal and the most obvious candidates were originally thought to be either Seybert of Essex who died in 616 or his grandson Siegbert who was murdered in 653. Both were East Saxon kings, both known to have converted to Christianity and Seybert was a nephew of Uthelbert of Kent. But that strong carbon date of 580, and you always get a range of carbon dating, but the upper range was 605 so he's still a decade before the death of Seybert, forced a bit of a rethink and the Museum of London now favour Saxer who was Seybert's younger brother. In the popular press he was called the King of Bling or the Prittlewell Prince. Our time team did an episode on this discovery in 2005. Now after the discovery there was local opposition to the road widening scheme and Southend Borough Council chose a different route avoiding the site and in 2019 a new gallery opened in Southend Central Museum to display the items from Prittlewell. Now next time we're going to look at some finds that will lead us deep into the mythology of Ireland. If you've enjoyed this video hit the like and subscribe buttons and click on the notification bell to be informed when the next video is published.