In search of the palace of King Offa
Sutton, Hereford
5 March 2000

Within the bounds of the scheduled ancient monument all digging, including the initial removal of the turf top layer, had to be done by hand. Outside this area, a mechanical digger made the task easier – although sometimes the excavation seemed to be unearthing more potatoes than archaeology:

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Photography: James Pickering

Four miles north of Hereford, adjacent to the River Lugg, a tributary of the River Wye, are the Suttons. Two small villages, located a mile or so to the south west of the Iron-Age hillfort of Sutton Walls, they have long been associated with King Offa of Mercia, who ruled this powerful Saxon kingdom from 757 to his death in 796. Offa's Dyke, the vast earthwork that marked Mercia's western borders, is just a few miles away. And there is historical evidence to suggest that, three years before the end of Offa's reign, he came to a royal vill, or palace, in a place called Sutton. But no archaeological proof of its precise location has ever been found.

The area around the Suttons is rich in archaeological sites. The Sutton Walls hillfort has earthworks on a scale comparable with Maiden Castle. There is evidence of both Roman and Saxon occupation in the vicinity. And a medieval manor house, Freen's Court, complete with fishponds, artificial water channels, dams, a lake and a moat, is known to have existed on the site – giving landscape expert Stewart Ainsworth more than his usual share of exciting 'lumps and bumps' to get worked up about when he arrived on the scene.

Then, perhaps most exciting of all, there were the tantalising results of an aerial photographic survey carried out in 1990. This produced some remarkable pictures of previously unrecorded parch marks on the grassy meadow next to the River Lugg and adjacent to the former manor-house structures. These showed what appeared to be a series of post holes or stone pads on which posts would have been mounted to support a large aisled building. This could have been built of timber or stone and appeared to consist of up to nine bays, each approximately four metres wide. Next to this were further parch-mark outlines of a 'multi-celled' building, up to 60 metres in length and 10 metres wide.

Could either of these structures have been associated with King Offa's palace? Comparison with similar sites at Northampton and elsewhere suggested the structures may have had a Saxon origin. Certainly English Heritage was sufficiently convinced by the possibility to declare the whole area a scheduled ancient monument. With only a dozen Anglo-Saxon palace sites ever having been positively identified in Britain, the discovery of a thirteenth would have been a major archaeological find indeed.

As so often in this series, Time Team was treading new ground with this programme. The Project Design – basically a very detailed breakdown of the proposed investigation of the site, which has to be approved by English Heritage in advance of any excavation of a scheduled ancient monument – had been prepared not by the Team but the county archaeologist, Keith Ray. Time Team had worked with him before in his previous post, at Plympton in the 1999 series, and he was to act as project director on this occasion. He also brought along his deputy, Tim Hoverd, as excavation director and a team of experienced local diggers to work alongside the Team's usual crew. An English Heritage inspector, Paul Stamper, was present throughout to keep an eye on things and ensure that the Project Design was adhered to.

A diary of each day's dig, together with photos and details of some of the artefacts found was kept on the Timesite website www.timesite.fsnet.co.uk, which ran 'live' with the excavations as they took place last October. Suffice to say here that, as ever, things did not run exactly according to plan. For a start, a geophysics survey carried out by English Heritage eight years previously turned out not to be as useful as it might have been because the all-important grid reference details to locate it precisely had gone missing. Then the long, wet grass resulted in confusing readings being produced by Time Team's own geophysics survey. And to cap it all, after a half-day delay before the first turf could be lifted, all the digging in the main trenches – involving the shifting of 17 tonnes of material, it was estimated – had to be done by hand because permission to excavate scheduled ancient monuments stipulates that no machines can be used.

In fact, none of the excavations at the Suttons yielded artefacts or structures that could be definitively dated to the Saxon period. Trench One, a section cut through an earthwork bank, produced no finds at all, turning out to be part of a dam associated with the various water features that once stood on the site. Trench Two, when it finally got under way, quickly produced a stone post pad, but as Mick Aston suspected when it first emerged, it was of a later date. And Trench Three contained plenty of building material, nearly all of it post-medieval. The massive Trench Four was later dug on the site of a knoll some 300 metres from the main site, and two further trenches were later put in the area of an enclosure ditch and platform by the village church.

It was not until relatively late in the excavations that Trench Two uncovered an early wall, which could be dated by the presence of a piece of an earthenware cooking pot to the 12th century or earlier. And Trench Two saved up its buried treasures until the very last, when the charred remains of a wooden floor were discovered late on the final day. These were radio-carbon dated to almost 1,000 years ago, about the same age as the pottery sherd from Trench Two and another found in Trench Four.

Then, with the Team's investigation winding down at the end of the third day, came the revelation that the post pads in Trench Two did not line up with the parch marks on the aerial photographs. In fact, there were signs of post holes on a slightly different alignment, something far more consistent with a high-status Saxon building – such as a palace. There was no proof, of course, that this was what it was, but as Tony Robinson summarised, it was certainly 'a strong candidate' for future archaeological investigations to focus on.

The murder of Aethelbert and the founding of Hereford
In the bloody and tumultuous times of the late eighth century, both murders and marriages were common among the conflicting royal dynasties of Anglo-Saxon England. The surprise Viking raid on the monastic community of Lindisfarne in 793 gave an added spur to efforts to bring together and strengthen the different kingdoms, and King Offa of Mercia was always seeking out opportunities to enhance his own position.

In 792, King Aethelred of Northumbria had married Offa's daughter, Princess Aelflaed. Then, in 794, King Aethelbert of East Anglia visited the Mercian court at the Sutton palace, with a view to marrying another of Offa's daughters, Princess Aelfryth. There are various accounts of what happened next, ranging from the largely factual account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to the heavily embroidered reports contained in the hagiographies of the saints, dating from the 12th century and later. What is certain is that Offa had Aethelbert executed. One of these Lives of St Aethelbert took up the story thus:

'Aethelbert, the holy and Christian King of the East Angles goes into Mercia to seek the hand of King Offa's daughter Aelfryth. He is lodged in the royal vill called Sutton [hospitatur in regia villa Suttun nominata] where he has a vision, prefiguring his martyrdom. Offa is persuaded by his wicked wife Coenfryth and an East Anglian exile Winberht, that Aethelbert is plotting against him and allows Winberht to cut off his head. Aelfryth, horrified, makes a vow of virginity and declares her intention to become a hermit at Crowland.

'On Offa's orders, the body is thrown into a marsh beside the River Lugg [in paludem prope ripam Lugge fluminis]. As a result of a vision, Berhtferth, Offa's chamberlain, and his friend Ecgmund retrieve the body and take it in an ox-cart to a place called Fernlage, by the River Wye [ad locum qui Fernlage dicitur propter ripan fluminis Waege]. They raise and wash the body and, after a long search, the head, and take it on the cart as instructed by the vision, but – as pre-ordained by God, the head falls off the cart at a place called Lyde [Luda]; a blind man stumbles upon the head, recovers his sight and chases after the cart, catching it at Shelwick [Sceldwica]. The martyr's body is buried in a place marked with a column of light, and a minster is built on the venerated site.

'This place ... was once called Fernlage ... but the name was afterwards changed ... [and] ... was called Hereford.'

Quiz

Resources

Other websites

This website contains links to other websites which are not under the control of and are not maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

Anglo-Saxon England
There is an extensive range of materials on the web concerning Anglo-Saxon England, although surprisingly little that is specifically about King Offa and Mercia. One of the best 'gateways' to a variety of weblinks is the ORB Online Encyclopedia Guide to Online Resources on Anglo-Saxon England at http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/early/pre1000/ASindex.html. Since it is intended first to be a resource for teachers and students of Old English, it has a heavy emphasis on original Saxon sources, ranging from online versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to the Lord's Prayer in Old English. It also provides a large number of links to related websites, maps, works of art and bibliographies.

A very extensive, academic bibliography on Anglo-Saxon history, produced by Simon Keynes, of the Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research at the Western Michigan University, can be found at www.wmich.edu/medieval/rawl/keynes1/home.htm. Closer to home, there are a number of Anglo-Saxon related links listed at www.gla.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/jwh/anglo.html.

Pottery
Meanwhile, if you have ever longed to know what ceramic petrology is all about and how you can identify those tiny pottery sherds that are so decisive in dating so many archaeological features, you could pay a visit to www.postex.demon.co.uk/. This is the website of the Alan Vince Archaeological Consultancy (AVAC). Alan Vince was the pottery expert who was called in by Time Team to identify the pottery finds at the Suttons. And petrology, in case you were wondering, is the study of rocks and minerals based on the identification of minerals and their associations. Ceramic petrology is a specialised sub-discipline which uses the same techniques and knowledge to study burnt and fired clay and archaeological artefacts made from this material.

King Offa and Islam
A curious discovery from the time of King Offa concerns a coin he had minted bearing an Islamic inscription. Since this dates from a period relatively close to the life of Mohammed and the origins of Islam, when the Muslim faith would have been virtually unknown in England, it has puzzled archaeologists and historians. For a flavour of how the discovery has been greeted by partial (non-archaeological) advocates from both the Christian and Muslim traditions, see http://users.erols.com/zenithco/offa.html, for a Muslim view, and www.answering-islam.org/Hoaxes/offa.html for a Christian response.

The central text on the coin contains the standard Islamic incantation: 'There is no God except Allah, He is the one and only, He has no partner.' The text around the circumference reads 'Mohammed the Messenger of Allah, [who] sent him with guidance and true religion to make it victorious over all [other] religions.' The other side reads 'Mohammed is the Messenger of Allah' and has the name of King Offa written upside down within that text. The text around the circumference reads 'In the name of Allah. This was minted in 157 AH' (773-774 AD).

Further reading

The Anglo-Saxons by James Campbell, Eric John and Patrick Wormald (Penguin, 1991) paperback £15.99
Three distinguished historians open a window on the dimly lit centuries spanning the gap between the decline of the Roman Empire and the Norman Conquest – an era marked by the ravages of the Viking invasions, the conversion to Christianity and the bloody rivalries of the neighbouring kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia. Major figures such as Offa, Alfred, Edgar and Cnut are discussed in detail. This is the introduction to the period: handsomely produced, readable and crammed with hundreds of stunning photographs of the Anglo-Saxon legacy, from the glittering treasures of Sutton Hoo to the exquisite Bayeux Tapestry. A beautiful book.

Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest by H R Loyn (Addison Wesley Longman Higher Education, 1991) paperback £20.99
More than 30 years since its first edition, this book still remains a standard text on the social and economic development of Anglo-Saxon England from the first settlements in the fifth and sixth centuries AD to the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest. It draws on surviving legal and literary sources, as well as the latest findings of archaeologists, numismatists and art historians.

The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England edited by Catherine E Karkoy (Garland Publishing, 1999) hardback £50
This volume offers comprehensive coverage of the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, bringing together essays on specific fields, sites and objects, and offering the reader a representative range of both traditional and modern methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches to the subject. Individual sections deal with settlement archaeology, the archaeology of church and monastery, death and burial and women and the material record.

The Anglo-Saxon World by Kevin Crossley-Holland (Oxford University Press, 1999) paperback £6.99

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated and edited by Michael Swanton (Dent, 1996) paperback £12.99
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the first continuous national history of any Western people in their own language. This translation is the most complete and faithful yet published, with extensive notes referring the entries to current knowledge as well as to maps and genealogical tables.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle translated and edited by Michael Swanton (Exeter University Press) 1999, £5.99
A basic translation without the notes, maps and tables that accompany the above.

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