Basil Brown was a boy farmer from Rickinghall, Suffolk, who left school at age 13 to work on his father’s estates. He seemed determined to spend his life working on the land.
Brown, who was born in 1888, certainly succeeded in the task – though not through agriculture. He went on to work the land in a very different way.
As a young man, he nurtured a passion: digging up hidden treasures and revealing the archaeological secrets of the local countryside. And like the Netflix movie Excavation, released on January 29, reveals that he triumphed in an impressive style – upon discovering the Sutton Hoo treasure in 1939.
Under a large mound of land on private land outside of Woodbridge in Suffolk, Brown – who is played by Ralph Fiennes – discovered the buried remains of an entire 27-meter-long ship; a secret chamber filled with gold and silver; a jeweled hilt sword; gold shoulder clasps inlaid with garnet; and iron pieces that were later assembled to create the elaborate and iconic Sutton Hoo helmet. The 7th century treasure was the richest grave ever dug in Europe.
“Brown discovered this country’s greatest archaeological treasure and, in the process, transformed our understanding of English life in the early medieval period,” says Sue Brunning, curator of the British Museum’s Sutton Hoo collection.
“Before Sutton Hoo, Britain was thought to have declined a lot in cultural and economic terms after the Romans left. But Brown revealed treasures in this peaceful corner of England that could be traced from sources across Europe and Asia and showed that a vast trade in wealth was taking place at the time. England was not culturally backward. “
The original decision to dig at Sutton Hoo was made by the wealthy widow Edith Pretty (played by Carey Mulligan). His property was dotted with tombs that were looted during the Tudor days. Was there any treasure left, she wondered? Experts at the Ipswich Museum recommended Brown – who by now had taken night classes while running the small property he took over from his father, earned several degrees and started working on local archaeological excavations.
In 1938, he made some excavations that provided promising results and decided the following year to investigate the largest pile of the property. Shortly after starting, Brown discovered a piece of rusty iron that he recognized as a rivet from the bow of a ship.
Very slowly, he removed the soil to reveal the shape of an entire container. The wood had disintegrated, but the rivets were precisely in place, revealing the perfect outline of a Saxon ship. It was an amazing sight: a ghostly image of an old ship printed on Suffolk soil.
Sutton Hoo
At the time, virtually all ship burials had been found in Norway and were of Nordic origin. But Brown quickly realized that this was not a Viking ship, but an Anglo-Saxon ship from an earlier period. “It is the find of a lifetime,” he wrote in his diary on June 29, 1939.
The excavation progressed to reveal a separate mortuary chamber that was again carefully excavated. His treasures proved to be just as exotic, as Brown discovered on July 22, when he was summoned by his team’s animated shouts and discovered that a treasure had been discovered.
“I never expected to see so much gold in any excavation in this country,” wrote Brown that night. “There was a heavy gold buckle, the structure of a beautiful gold bag, on which were 39 gold coins … a solid gold belt with the best cloisonné works. All the objects shone in the sun as on the day they were buried. “
The effort and resources involved in dragging a ship inland before filling it with treasure and then burying it would have been a remarkable undertaking that brings to mind images of the old English poem Beowulf, with its wooden halls very high and powerful kings and nobles. Brown helped to repaint our image of early medieval England.
At first, no trace of human remains was found at the site and it was concluded that it was more of a cenotaph than a grave. “However, subsequent excavations indicated decaying organic debris that could have been human,” said Brunning. “To be sure, a huge, ornate sword had been laid out in a way that was consistent with other warrior tombs. So I am confident that this was the tomb of a great individual, perhaps even a king. “
That person’s identity is not so certain, however. The best candidate remains King Raedwald, who died around 625 AD, although there is still disagreement among archaeologists over who was buried at Sutton Hoo.
As for the immediate destination of Brown’s treasure, it was less glamorous. On September 3, Britain declared war on Germany and the country entered a martial blockade. Sutton Hoo was covered and his gold and silver taken to London’s Aldwych tube station, where the British Museum was storing its greatest treasures. After only a few weeks in sunlight, he was placed in a tunnel that was 10 times deeper than his original resting place in Suffolk and returned to darkness until the end of the war.
Today, the treasure has its own room in the British Museum. The helmet, which was found in pieces at Sutton Hoo, was assembled and the rest of its treasures put on public display – a monument to the sophistication of our 7th century predecessors and Basil Brown, who unearthed its glories.
“He did an incredible job excavating the ship at Sutton Hoo,” says Brunning. “He may have been self-taught, but he was a remarkable archaeologist. As for the film, I think it gives a lot of credit to the man and the find. “