75 years of the Sutton Hoo finds

75 years ago this week, a discovery was being made in the East of England that was to change our understanding of the past forever. 

Mound 2 - showing what the mounds might originally have looked like

While war clouds gathered in the summer of 1939, a self-taught Suffolk archaeologist called Basil Brown was uncovering the remnants of a much earlier Germanic invasion force, in the form of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial. It turned out to be the grave of King Raedwald, the king of the East Angles who died in c.625. 

The Deben Estuary. The ship was hauled up the hill from here

The King's identity was revealed by the high-status nature of the items that lay next to him: beside the sword, shield, bowls and other decorative items was the famous Sutton Hoo helmet which now occupies centre stage in the recently re-opened Room 41 of the British Museum.

 

Tranmer House from the mounds

The find put Sutton Hoo firmly on the map. There had been no archaeological discovery of this importance in Britain before 1939 – and there has not been since.  A heathland plateau above the Deben estuary was revealed as the hugely symbolic resting place of a king, and, it turned out, many others too. In fact, I learned yesterday that there are still burial mounds at Sutton Hoo that await archaeological investigation, even while the site has suffered over the centuries from the depredations of grave-robbers, the plough, and even second world war defences.

 

Mound 1 - containing the ship - excavated 75 years ago this summer

I enjoyed this evening’s garden party at Sutton Hoo, which recreated the sherry party that Mrs Edith Pretty threw on this day in 1939 to celebrate Basil Brown’s discovery. (Mrs Pretty was the owner of Sutton Hoo at the time; after half a century of further archaeological investigations the place came into the National Trust's care in the 1990s.)  We noted the contribution made by Basil Brown, who was forced to watch from the side-lines as a team of professional archaeologists moved in to take command of the subsequent investigations – a drama that will be recreated on film soon. Cate Blanchett will apparently play Mrs Pretty – I wonder who will take Basil’s role?

Buildings, Bugs and Butterflies*: a response to the Heritage Exchange

At the Heritage Exchange event hosted this week by the Heritage Lottery Fund, delegates were invited to vote for the greatest scourge of our built heritage. Was it, the poll asked, the 1960s town planners who wreaked such destruction on historic city centres up and down the land in the post-war era? Or was it those meddlesome badgers, who as well as moving the goalposts like nothing better than to burrow deep into Bronze Age burial mounds? Or perhaps the greatest disdain should be reserved for the Victorians, forever scraping away at the crumbling walls of medieval churches or pulling them down altogether in order to replace them with smart new ‘old’ buildings?

The 1960s town planners topped the poll, you may not be surprised to hear, even though today the fate of much of our historic environment is entirely dependent on the ongoing survival of the planning profession (and the IHBC, ALGAO and English Heritage have some pretty troubling stats about the demise of planning services and conservation officers in particular).

But another heritage enemy was highlighted this week, when the BBC carried an article about Buddleia.

Enemy? How so? Buddleia is a plant that looks splendid at the moment – its bright purple flowers erupting like fireworks in the flower bed. Butterflies love them, and there can be no finer sight on a drowsy summer’s day than a buddleia plant swarming with insect life of all kinds. There’s a plant at the bottom of my garden in fact, which looks amazing, and just grows continuously.

Buddleia at the bottom of my garden

But that is the problem. As the BBC article pointed out, buddleia is also one of those plants that can cause great damage to the built environment. It is highly invasive, thanks to its tiny seeds which are carried on the wind and find homes in the most unlikely places – railway verges, cracks in the pavement, holes in the wall. Once it gets into mortar it can cause huge damage to buildings. Hardly surprising that derelict buildings are nothing without the obligatory tuft of buddleia protruding from damp window sills or gutters. Once the plant is in it is costly to remove and to clean up after.

This battle – between natural and built heritage – was one of the issues debated at some length at Heritage Exchange. We all want beautiful gardens that are rich in widlflife, and Butterfly Conservation are actively promoting the planting of buddleia (with sensible precautions) to encourage butterflies. But how do we balance this with also ensuring that the built heritage is looked after and protected from invasion?  Others, after all, warn against any form of buddleia planting because of its rapacious characteristics.

More generally, how can we ever possibly find a language that enables us to weigh up our feelings for built heritage with those for the natural world? Are the two inevitably collision-bound? Or can we find a way of talking about what we value that ensures room for both? If so, is it possible to translate this into a political message? Governments, after all, are prone to ‘divide and conquer’ approaches, putting all the nature experts into one ministry and its quangos (Defra/Natural England) and the buildings experts into another (DCMS/DCLG/English Heritage). One of the conclusions of the Heritage Exchange was that we needed to find a better discourse to articulate the values that are held simultaneously in both natural and built components of the landscape.

The organisation I work for, the National Trust, has been riding this tension between the built and the natural ever since we were set up 120 years ago in 1895. Indeed our charitable purposes call for us to promote the permanent preservation of places of ‘beauty or historic interest’, but especially in relation to the ‘natural aspect features and animal and plant life’ found on our land. Having to decide whether to cut down the buddleia in the interests of keeping the wall up is something of a no-brainer, even while our ’50 Things’ campaign encourages children to hunt for butterflies on the tips of buddleia.

Moderation in all things is surely the message. The idea that built and natural heritage occupy two separate worlds is entirely misplaced, despite some of the provocations heard at Heritage Exchange.  Buildings, bugs, butterflies and buddleia: all are part of our rich tapestry, and deserve our care and attention even while they pursue lives of their own.

PS Many thanks to all on Twitter who helped to identify the other bug I found in my kitchen this weekend! It turns out to have been a carrion-feeding beetle. Yuk.

(*With apologies to Lauren Child)