The Dig

 

Sutton Hoo map, showing the burial mounds on
Edith Pretty's land. Marked in
red are those opened in 1938 & 1939.

Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty in The Dig

I saw a delightful film last evening, The Dig, set in Britain’s 1939 as the country prepares reluctantly for war. In deepest Suffolk, the excavation of Sutton Hoo is about to begin as Spitfires fly overhead. The film tells the story of that discovery and of two people intimately involved with it. Edith Pretty, a rich young widow who wants to find help in unearthing whatever lies beneath a series of ancient hillocks, some huge, on her farm land and the man she finds, working class autodidact Basil Brown, an amateur astronomer and archaeologist. They turn out to be kindred spirits in their faith in archaeology as an important path to, and connection with, the past. And their combined enthusiasm and skills discover a spectacular funerary monument on an epic scale.

Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown.

Basil had been a gifted child in his thirst for knowledge and his ability to learn; he was studying astronomical texts, inherited from an interested grandfather, from the age of five. As was the way of the working class world, however, Basil left school at 12 and worked on the farm for which his father was tenant. But, extraordinarily, Basil continued to pursue education for himself through evening classes and correspondence courses and taught himself Latin and French, obtaining diplomas in astronomy, geography and geology. Though medically unfit for war service, Brown volunteered for the Suffolk Army Medical Corps during WW1, marrying after the war but eventually finding the farm he had inherited, which was, in truth, more of a smallholding, insufficient to support a couple. He tried various jobs to earn a living outside the farm, while continuing with his archaeological excursions when possible.

Basil Brown in 1939 working on the dig.

In the postwar years and into the thirties, Brown continued to investigate various sites in North Suffolk, chiefly following his interest in Roman remains, and his industry proved fruitful. In 1934 his investigations into Roman industrial potteries led to the discovery of a Roman kiln in Wattisfield, a prestigious find, which in turn led to his friendship with Guy Maynard, curator of the Ipswich Museum and through this connection, he began contractual work for the museum in 1935 from where he eventually found his way in 1939 to Sutton Hoo and Edith Pretty. This is a lovely story of the subsequent mutual respect and admiration which developed between the rich heiress and the poor farmer boy, self-described, ‘excavator’, who was, nonetheless, totally confident in his own ability. Their relationship underpinned the discovery and initial unearthing of the extraordinary burial ship at Sutton Hoo and its treasures.

Gold buckle from a belt.

Reconstituted from hundreds of fragments
to display this 7th century hammered
iron helmet belonging to the Saxon warrior king.

Professional archaeologists working on
the long-ship recovery in 1939..

There were eighteen mounds of varying sizes on Edith Pretty’s land, and Brown arrived in June 1938 to stay with Pretty’s chauffeur. He brought a sizeable part of his extensive library on archaeology spanning the Bronze Age to the Anglo Saxon and started work, copying the cross-trench digging methods he had observed in the 1934 excavations of Iron Age mounds at Warborough in Norfolk. He started digging in Mound 3 and quickly discovered that three mounds had been robbed, probably in mediaeval times, but overall in these early, tentative excavations Brown discovered Anglo-Saxon pottery, chiefly shards, an axe, possibly Viking, and early Saxon rivets There is no room here for a blow by blow, or a dig by dig, analysis of Brown’s work from the summer of 1938 to 1939 but on June 14th 1939, Brown uncovered the burial chamber within the original ship, and by mid-July had discovered the impression left in the sandy soil by a 27 metre long-ship from the 7^th century A.D: he and Maynard [Ipswich] surmised that the original might have been cut in half with one half used to roof, and thus protect, the first half of the ship and its contents. The British Museum was called in and professional archaeologists installed, under the leadership of Charles Phillips, Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, so that inevitably Brown’s leading role was downsized [he was excluded, for instance, from excavating the burial site he had discovered] though in August 1939 he testified at the treasure trove inquest which awarded ownership of everything discovered on-site to Edith Pretty. Subsequently she donated the entire trove to the British Museum in a hugely generous act.

Purse lid  of decorative gold, originally
part of a leather purse.

Edith Pretty, rich, well-educated and well-connected, had been acquainted as a child, with archaeological digs through her father and an Egyptologist friend. She claimed that the intriguing mounds had been a decisive factor in her and her husband’s decision to buy Tranmer House, near Woodbridge, originally, with the intention of eventual investigation. She became the single-minded instigator of the Sutton Hoo dig and fervent supporter of both it and of Basil Brown. The eventual discovery, identified as possibly the burial site for Raedwald of East Anglia, an elite Saxon warrior king, was later described as “one of the most important archaeological discoveries of all time” by a British Museum curator. Among the stunning discoveries buried in tribute to the dead king, were Byzantine silverware, sumptuous gold jewellery, a lavish feasting set and an ornate, hammered iron helmet. This amazing discovery changed our understanding of some of the first chapters of English history transforming perceptions of a period seen as backward and dark into a richer view of a cultured and sophisticated society.

Edith Pretty.

Gold coins and ingots, from the burial.

Basil Brown.