Anglo-Saxon History

11/02/2025

The Fuller Brooch.

Originally dismissed as a modern forgery, due to its stunning condition, the brooch was bought by Capt A.W.F. Fuller for its silver value. When it was later proved to date to the 9th century, Capt Fuller donated it to the British Museum on the condition that it was named after him.

The brooch is not known of prior to the late 19th century, although it does have a custom made sharkskin case that dates to the 17th century suggesting it was a valued piece even then. The condition is incredible, so good in fact that it is thought that it has never been buried and was probably handed down from generation to generation since it was made in the late 9th century!

The brooch is 4.5 inches across and would have had a pin to secure it on the reverse, now missing - 2 holes at the top indicate that it may have been modified at a later date to hang from a cord. This type of brooch would have been worn by men & women.

It is decorated with the five senses. The central figure is Sight with large oval eyes (very similar to the Alfred Jewel), surrounded by:

Taste, upper left with hand in mouth.
Smell, upper right with hands behind their back.
Touch, lower right rubbing hands.
Hearing, lower left with hand to ear.

The outside of the brooch is decorated with human, bird, animal, and plant motifs, possibly representing the 4 stages of life.

Pic credit: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

02/02/2025

Cloisonné decoration is thought to have originated in the Black Sea, Caucasus, or West Asia area in c.200, with the technique arriving in England sometime in the late 6th century. Isidore of Seville identified 12 kinds of garnet, noting that they were hard to cut and that eastern kings were famed for using them. Pliny the Elder called them ‘carbunculli’, Latin for little coals, as they glowed red like fire.

Narrow strips of gold were attached edge on to a backing sheet of gold, forming the required pattern. This can be hard to see on a complete object - pic 3 is a brooch found in Kent with most of the garnets missing enabling you to see the patchwork of gold strips that make the patterns and held the garnets. Each of these shapes/cells was then filled with a paste so that when the garment was put it place, it was flush with the surface of the object. Before the garnet was fitted, a thin sheet of textured gold foil was inserted (pic 4 diagram & pic 1 this detail can be seen through the garnets) This foil reflected the light back through the garnet making it glow. Without this tiny bit of foil, each garnet would be dull in appearance.

This can be seen best in the Sutton Hoo helmet (pic 5) - each eyebrow is garnet lined, but only the garnets over the right eye (left as you look at it) are gold foil backed. One suggestion is that this would make that eye sparkle in firelight whilst the other remained dull, possibly imitating the one eyed god Woden, whom most Anglo-Saxon royal dynasties traced their genealogies back to.

Pic credit: 1, 3, 4, & 5 British Museum, and pic 2 Norwich Museum

Content taken from the British Museum Silk Roads Exhibition https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/silk-roads/sri-lanka-suffolk-sutton-hoo-and-silk-roads

28/01/2025

https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-humanities-arts-and-social-sciences/archaeology-and-history/archaeologists-find-lost-site-depicted-in-the-bayeux-tapestry/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0eLDsU3cJi7-Hcawa9ws2W-kju4UAa0RXxTQhRCUatxr9Nxef-cU16obI_aem_M6vZbpkdb0gBoap9jowgBA

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that a house in England is the site of a lost residence of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England. By reinterpreting previous excavations and conducting new surveys, the team from

19/01/2025

Silk Road Garnets.

In 2023, during the research for the British Museum ‘Silk Roads’ exhibition, some of the garnet encrusted objects from Sutton Hoo were taken to Paris so that the garnets could be analysed in situ by the National Centre for Research & Restoration in French Museums.

Analysis carried out in the early 1980’s had identified that the garnets were similar to those found in Europe, suggesting that they came from the same source, although the garnets proved difficult to analyse when still fitted to objects.

Using a particle accelerator to fire a beam into each garnet (PIXE - Particle-Induced X-ray Emission), the chemical composition of each garnet was identified. This newer technique involved firing a beam at individual garnets, some as small as 3mm across, with the result appearing on a screen almost instantly (see pic 5).

The analysis identified that the garnets had come from 3 distinct areas - India, Sri Lanka, and Czechia, with all of the objects tested having a mix of garnets from at least 2 areas, apart from one, the imitation buckle (pic 1), whose garnets came entirely from India. Each area produced slightly different shades, as can be seen clearly in the scabbard button (pic 2). Whether garnets were chosen purely for their colour, or by the location they came from (or both), is not known, but to have one object with garnets purely from one location only, makes the imitation buckle unique so far.

Items from the Staffordshire Hoard (pics 7 to 10, not necessarily these items) have also been tested using this technique with similar results. The objects style and test results suggest that they may well have been made in the same East Anglian workshop, possibly by the same person.

Photo Credit: 1 to 6 British Museum, 7 to 10 me.

07/01/2025

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wl9re5j1qo

Archaeologists believe the coins belonged to a local figure who was trying to hide his money.

04/01/2025

This is a depiction of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians and daughter of Alfred the Great, taken from the cartulary of Abingdon Abbey. Æthelflæd was powerful and successful during the late 9th and early 10th centuries, but you would need to go back in time a few hundred years to the beginning of the Conversion Period to find the origins of the power that women came to wield during the Anglo-Saxon period.

There are no written Anglo-Saxon sources prior to the arrival of Christianity with the Roman Mission led by Saint Augustine in c.597. This has led academics to study how other European people’s treated women and to suggest that this may be reflected in how the early Anglo-Saxons also treated women in society. Rodney Stark writes that ‘Christian women enjoyed considerably greater status that Pagan women’. Although he is writing about the growth of Christianity in the Greek and Roman worlds during antiquity, it is worth noting some of his findings and how they could relate to our period.

His first point is that men outnumbered women in Pagan society. He puts this down to female infanticide that was a common Pagan practice that helped to skew population ratios in favour of men. Stark then argues that Christian communities had more women due to the prohibition of infanticide and abortion which caused a surplus.

These ideas may be visible in the early Kentish law codes. These codes which were originally oral codes from the pre-Christian societies provide protection for women including provisions against the buying of maidens and the kidnapping of widows. All of these provisions providing protection, and the rules restricting the ‘acquiring’ of women, may suggest that men outnumbered women in pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon society, hence why there were law codes specifically aimed at these practices. Later law codes contained fewer protections suggesting that there was no longer any need to kidnap or buy women as the female population had increased under Christianity. This change in culture would soon thrust women into powerful roles that meant they were able to imitate the male world both spiritual and secular.

02/01/2025

Hexham Abbey Font.

This font might be one of the oldest font in England….or it might not be!

The font sits on a column dating to the 12th century, which stands upon stone steps from c.1908. The bowl cover is from the early 18th century, and the wooden font canopy hanging above dates in part from the 15th century (see stories for old pic).

The guide (also the author of the Hexham Abbey guide book) suggested that the font itself may have been the hollowed out upturned base of a Roman column. It definitely has the look of a column base, and considering the amount of reused Roman stones in the crypt, this could well be true.

01/01/2025

And that, as they say, is that - 2024 is done and dusted.

Thanks to all who have liked, commented, and shared over the last 12 months.

This years resolution is to share as many history accounts as I can - there’s so much great content to be found so let’s share the passion!

Here’s to a productive 2025 😃

#2025 #2024

29/12/2024

https://www.medievalists.net/2024/04/burial-practices-early-medieval-england/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3XvLCyczbtbxUlv3c5tPCGCBQ5HDOaTnQfplGjp3EPjtEjeG01k3crAVs_aem_dtJ0YvhGxxpxRR0qApNYTQ

It was around the year 600 that burials changed in England. A new study reveals that it was during this time that people altered where and how they buried their dead.

28/12/2024

https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/theconveyor/women-in-the-margins-eadburg-and-bodleian-library-ms-selden-supra-30/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1cPEXdKxXdJjFdG8oYyX8TWeOKckjeauBshUYNcaHbTnAzzs_ogDD_lIw_aem_XRJOEMayD59XR_-3x93d6g

by Jessica Hodgkinson and John Barrett A series of exciting inscriptions, almost invisible to the naked eye, have been discovered in the margins of an important eighth-century manuscript in the Bod…

28/12/2024

https://eoforwicproject.wordpress.com/2024/12/25/after-hastings-compilation/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2jL7Xfd4WYE8qB1jOqmwuC_mkzJTwWyuutyk-_ihRjShi2MaURFsov00Y_aem_lgRJXY9MiDUo760DMxFymQ

is a collaborative living history project dedicated to telling women’s stories from the time of the Norman Conquest.

28/12/2024

These are the shoulder clasps discovered in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in July 1939. These are the only known examples in Anglo-Saxon England and are absolutely spectacular!

They are decorated with regular lines of step-patterned cloisenné work with animal interlace around the borders. This all over carpet like design is especially noteworthy as it predates the Book of Durrow, a Northumbrian Christian illuminated manuscript, by at least 50 years and is found for the first time in what is arguably a Pagan context. The fashion for carpet pages also appears n other famous gospel books like the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells.

The clasps are held together by thick gold pins that end in animal heads which would originally have had garnets for eyes. On the reverse of each clasp are gold staples that would have allowed them to be sewn onto a cloth or leather cuirass. It is possible that they were copied from the shoulder fittings of Roman parade armour. The link back to the Imperial legacy of Rome is found in several items from the Sutton Hoo burial which suggests Anglo-Saxon elites were keen to show that they were the inheritors of the Roman Imperial power n England.

Pics 1 to 3 taken at Sutton Hoo August 2022
Pic 4 credit: British Museum

27/12/2024

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/26/really-incredible-sixth-century-sword-found-in-kent?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2O7TeFQBhb3Bo208QPEDi2_iT0uiPxD5EPo6H6XciObJggMVOL4bJW8p8_aem_wyuI9DKocmlbZ_Xsj6ejhg

Exclusive: Sword is among striking objects unearthed from Anglo-Saxon cemetery near Canterbury

21/12/2024

So what was Christmas like for the Anglo-Saxons?

The modern word Christmas has its roots in Anglo-Saxon old English - Cristesmæsse (Christ’s Mass). The first recorded use was in a book around c.1038 but it is thought that the word existed long before that but in the early Christian calendar far more importance was attached to Easter which may explain the lack of written references.

Prior to conversion to Christianity the Anglo-Saxons celebrated Yule, a festival that according to Bede coincided with the date of Christ’s birth. The Pagan Yule became the Christian Christmas ensuring a continuity between the old and new religions, a common theme in the early church.

Egbert of York (d.766) wrote that:

‘the English people have been accustomed to practise fasts, vigils, prayers, and the giving of alms both to monasteries and to the common people, for the full twelve days before Christmas’.

This description is not too far off today’s Christmas although gift giving has extended to all and fasting has been exchanged for over indulgence!

It was Alfred the Great who introduced a law stating that people were to take holiday from Christmas Day until 12th night so that they could observe the 12 days of Christmas, although slaves and unfree labourers were specifically excluded from this.

Photo Credit: Alan Baxter

❄️ ❄️

31/10/2024

Where better than Tamworth Castle for the haunting of a Norman baron by the ghost of an Anglo-Saxon abbess!!

Legend has it that the 1st Lord Marmion seized the Abbey at Polesworth and evicted the nuns. In 1139 the 2nd Lord Marmion was said to have been visited in a dream by the Black Lady, thought to be St Ealdgyth an abbess at Polesworth, warning him that if he did not restore the nuns to Polesworth Abbey he would meet with an untimely death.

St Ealdgyth then struck Marmion with her crozier, leaving him with a terrible head wound. The pain from the wound stayed with him until he restored the nuns to the abbey. The Black Lady is said to haunt the Lady’s Chamber and has been reportedly seen on the staircase that leads up to it (pic 2).

St Ealdgyth’s historical identity is up for debate, however some historians have identified her as either the sister or half-sister of King Æthelstan and she may have been brought up in Mercia alongside Æthelstan. Unfortunately, as with most women during this period, She has disappeared into the shroud of history and we will probably never know who she really was or what happened to her.

Story credit: Tamworth Castle
Pic credit: Me!

23/09/2024

06/09/2024

18/08/2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crg5zn781neo

Archeologists believe a quiet spot in Derbyshire may have witnessed key moments in Britain's history.