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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
- [00:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
- [00:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
If you would like to listen to Gone Medieval ad free and get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit with the History Hit subscription.
- [00:16]
Matt Lewis
You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries such as my new.
- [00:21]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Or my recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the show Notes for this episode.
- [00:49]
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- [01:20]
Scott Hanson
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- [02:53]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Jennica and welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from.
- [03:11]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
Kings to popes to the Crusades, we.
- [03:15]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here.
- [03:32]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
It's the seventh century and in the rugged landscape of Northumbria, an Anglo Saxon palace sits at the edge of a winds swept hill. It's a place where kings, queens and entourages from over the sea once gathered. Where the threads of medieval politics and religion were brought together in early medieval majesty. This is Ad Geffryn, the royal palace of King Edwin of Northumbria. For centuries, its location was a mystery. The venerable Bede hints at mass conversions to Christianity here in his famous history of Britain. Yet the palace itself eluded discovery, that is, until a 1949 aerial survey revealed mysterious crop marks north of Yeverring, a small village northwest of Newcastle, setting in motion one of the most significant archaeological investigations of the 20th century. Since then, archaeologists have been peeling back the layers, uncovering a grand hall, a ceremonial grandstand and traces of everyday life. Loom weights, fine gold jewelry. Each find tells a story of what made the northern reaches of Anglo Saxon England tick. They shine a light not just on the world of nobles and bishops, but on the lives of the hangers on who supported and shaped this royal world. Over the next hour, we'll hear from the archaeologists digging into the ground at Yevering and the museum team preserving the finds to open a window into this mysterious Northumbrian world. First up is Chris Ferguson, director of Visitor experience at the Adgaffern Museum and Distillery. Located just outside Newcastle, the museum tells the untold story of this remarkable Anglo Saxon palace and the part it played in Northumbria's golden age. I met with Chris on the windswept hill where Abgafren once stood to try and understand how a muddy field in the Northumbrian countryside was once so important to Anglo Saxon.
- [06:00]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Chris. I swear it doesn't matter how many times you bring me to this field, it still takes my breath away, which is a ridiculous thing to say about a field, but you know, we're here on top of this gorgeous hill underneath the Giving Bell, which is halfway to a mountain, sort of.
- [06:18]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, it's a good hike if you went up it.
- [06:21]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. I can see some 10 year olds walking up it right now, better than me. And we're looking out over a series of these gorgeous shield hills off into the distance. I know the North Seas beyond them somewhere. But this does seem like the sort of place where if I was going to flex, say I'm a king in the 8th century. In the 7th century. Yeah. I'm hanging out here all summer and that's what they were doing. Right?
- [06:45]
Matt Lewis
You absolutely are. And you've probably gone home by this point of the year because, you know, it's like we're sat here in the howling gale and the wind.
- [06:52]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That's true.
- [06:53]
Matt Lewis
I think they've probably left by this point as well, thinking this is all a bit cold and windswept. But the rest of the summer they're having a really glorious time in the sunshine in North Northumberland, looking out over these, like, incredible views.
- [07:06]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
We know, though, that this was a place that was inhabited well before they ever showed up. This is a pretty ancient site, as sites in Britain go.
- [07:15]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. I mean, if you want to, you could do that sort of classic thing. Everywhere in Britain likes to say, oh, it's a. It's a deep archaeological landscape with activity stretching back. But this genuinely is. You've got activity here going right the way back to the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. This flat plain that we're looking at in front of us would have been a lake. In prehistory, it was a glacial lake. There was a plug at the end that burst. But what that means is by the time you get to the Anglo Saxon period, it's a really agriculturally rich landscape.
- [07:46]
Scott Hanson
Right.
- [07:46]
Matt Lewis
You've got all of those nutrients that are sat in that lake bed that they can use for growing crops, grazing cattle, all stuff. And the river through the middle gives them the access to get here and be on this site.
- [07:58]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And that's one of the big reasons why this is a particularly wealthy kingdom. Right. In Northumbria, it's the cattle.
- [08:04]
Paulo Constantine
Right.
- [08:04]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
It's not their deal.
- [08:05]
Paulo Constantine
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:05]
Matt Lewis
I mean, that's the thing your. This is. This is agriculturally rich in every sense. So you've got the uplands you can graze your cattle on, you've got the lowlands you can bring them to in the summer, you've got all of your crop growing, your barley, your rye, your wheat, all of the things that can Keep the kingdom and your animals fed through the summer and ready access to the sea. You know, it feels like we're in the uplands with the Cheviots behind us, but we are only probably a half hour walk to the river and you're straight onto a boat that takes you straight out to the North Sea. So you're in a deeply connected bit of landscape.
- [08:39]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, speaking of deeply connected bits of landscape and getting to the sea, that's what sort of makes this site famous, isn't it? Because some people have come pretty famously pretty far to visit this. You know, I've just come up from London for the day, but we know for a fact we think that people are coming from Rome. Is that right?
- [09:01]
Matt Lewis
Yes, I mean this is, this is, it's a royal palace site. This is a site where the kings and queens were in residence and they'd bring people an assembly and people would come vast distances for that, the summer palace. And we know from be ecclesiastical history some of the things that actually happened on this site. So we have sort of the color and the characters and the knowledge of people. So like Bishop Paulinus who comes from Rome, he's sent by the Pope with Augustine's mission into Canterbury and he's part of that story of King Edwin and Queen Ethelbert and the first conversions and they took took place here and in the river below. And, and this is a place, it's not rural backwater Northumberland, it's deeply connected to all of Western Europe.
- [09:41]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. And I mean, to a certain Colinus shows up because there's a bit of a battle for what kind of Christianity we're going to have up here. I mean, it's not just the conversion of the people, which is fantastic. But you know, things were getting a little Irish Christian, you know, around this. And I think that, you know, Rome identifies this as a place where they're like, no, no, no, no. We're going to be the ones who are controlling this form of Christianity. And that tells us a lot about how rich and important this kingdom is, I think.
- [10:07]
Matt Lewis
Well, it absolutely is. And I think that's the, the fact that we are told about this site from Bede, that Paulinus is here. It's part of that conversion in the landscape. In the first phase of the conversions by the Roman Church, of course, King Edwin is killed in battle by the Mercians afterwards. And when he's killed and Paulinus flees and Ethelbert flees, the kingdom reverts to paganism. The king, it doesn't stick. It's then that Irish Story. It's the story that follows of King Oswald and the foundation of Lindisfarne that's yet to come. So this field, this place, is witness to all of that moving picture and that story. And you're so. It's what's so magical when you come here every time is you. You're standing in the footsteps of. Of some of the most significant moments in British history. In this field.
- [10:57]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
In this field. Now, a lot of the times that I've been here, I've come and I've looked at the field and do not get me wrong, the vibes impeccable, you know, the history off the charts.
- [11:06]
Paulo Constantine
But.
- [11:07]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
But we've come here because you've been digging for over a month now to have a look at some of the foundations of the buildings that were here. Can you tell me a little bit about what we got?
- [11:19]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. So for the last month. So this is the third season of a series of excavations by Durham University and the Geffren Trust and our Salzburg Museum to look at different parts of the earlier excavations of this site. So we know about this site from 1950s Excavations by Brian Hope Taylor, who rediscovered the site. And that's how we understand that this is one of those most significant sites in British archaeological stories. And he found some of the major buildings, the Great hall, the royal residence, the grandstand, the enclosures, the service buildings. And what Sarah and the team have been leading excavation to look at this year is two of those structures to re examine and reopen for the first time in 70 years. The grandstand, that big theater building, and also the great enclosure, because they looked at that the last season two years ago, came back again to look much more fully at that because its story seems to stretch far deeper into history than the Anglo Saxon story that we thought it was.
- [12:18]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Because last time I came a couple of years ago, I was really struck by the fact that this is, you know, this is a complex. You know, you would use the term palace because you've got this big enclosure, you've got multiple outbuildings, there's the Great hall where you have a big party, but also there's an amphitheater. And that is interesting and not particularly what I would expect to be in most Anglo Saxon circumstances.
- [12:48]
Matt Lewis
No, I mean the grandstand, the theater, it's unique in Anglo Saxon sites. No other Anglo Saxon royal complex has a structure like that. A lot of them, they all have great halls, they all have alignments with other buildings, but yeavering at Geffren is intentionally laid out in its alignment of buildings and has this great grandstand structure you're holding somewhere at its greatest extent in the region of 350, 370 people in there. And it's a raked building. For listeners to imagine how this looks, it's like a pie wedge in shape and plan on the ground and it rises up so like you're looking at a Roman amphitheater or a modern stadium. It's a sort of take a slice out of that, Take a pizza slice, pie wedge out of a stadium and it's that. And it's built entirely from timber. And it raises 5, 6 meters into the air and at its foot would have had a stage with a sound screen around the back. Because again, they're battling with the wind. Like, we're sort of sat in the wind. You feel the day they have to build a structure that deals with this prevailing.
- [13:54]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
A transit van to sit in.
- [13:56]
Matt Lewis
No, they have to build a timber structure. It makes it completely unique because there's nothing else like that that's been found archaeologically. And part of the reason to go back and look at it is to see if it really is an Anglo Saxon structure, to test that, to test our knowledge. We know what we think. It's one of those good things. We know what we know and we don't know what we don't know. One of the things when Brian Hope Taylor was excavating here in the 1950s is radiocarbon dating had just been invented and it was very expensive, so he didn't use it. He did his entire sequencing in inference by archaeological inference. So a large part of this is going back and getting modern scientific dating from in situ samples to test this chronology. Yeah, See that it's true. And see that that grandstand is truly an Anglo Saxon structure.
- [14:38]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Okay, so this makes sense to me when we look at it. Here's this pit and we have excavated. Now back to the. Is this the eighth row? What is this? Seventh, Eighth, yeah.
- [14:48]
Matt Lewis
So we're in the seventh, eighth, ninth rows.
- [14:50]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Wow. Okay. So, you know, we can really see where this is set up. And you can really see this curved fan shape. And I suppose for me, as a histor. Right. Because the difference between a historian and an archaeologist is archaeologists are doing the Lord's work, sitting in the field and digging things up. Fantastic. You know, historians like myself, we will steal that work. Thank you very much. But we are also waiting for someone to write something down, like be did, talking about the conversion that happens here. And then you sort of put those things together and you try to interpret what was going on. And I guess from my standpoint, when I see the theater, I'm saying, okay, well, there are two ways that I can think about this. One way is the Anglo Saxons here are seeing this connection to Rome. You know, here we've got Paulinus. They're trying to say we are a center of power, and we understand that one of the ways that power happens is through this connection to Rome. You have grand, monumental works, you build theaters, you have palaces. And I could understand why that would happen now. It would be pretty interesting. I don't know of any other Anglo Saxons who are going around doing that. However, this is a really rich and important place. So maybe, maybe that happened. But I could also very easily understand this as a Romano British site where we've got some Romans who posted up, said, wow, nice field that these guys have been hanging out in every summer. You know what we like to do in the summer? We like to put on plays. Let's build a theater.
- [16:27]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And I think that. And that's the great question with this, is it. If it is Romano British, it would be very unique because there's nothing else Roman, particularly. You've got a lot of Iron Age activity in this area, but you've got. We're north of Hadrian's Wall. We're not in an area of settled Roman towns and encampments, the same way you've got the forts and the forlets and the marching camps, but you don't have the great towns, Vinda being the nearest one. You don't have York. But if I'm here as an Anglo Saxon king queen, and I've got my timber world that I've built here, I'm also operating my. My kingdom of Northumbria at Bambra, where I'm inside an Iron Age ober. I'm at Catrick, where I'm inside a Roman town, and I'm at York, where I'm inside a Roman legionary town.
- [17:14]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah.
- [17:14]
Matt Lewis
And what I. And what they've probably got at York they may be using at York and Cataric are the remains of the Roman stone amphitheaters. So you could have a world where something about Northumbrian kingship requires them to have this sort of structure, because they're using the surviving Roman structures in York and Catrick, and they need to then build a timber version for whatever it is that they're doing with it. But it does then still operate completely separately to what they're doing as far as we know, in Kent or East Anglia or something like that. So it either says something significantly profound about Northumbrian power relationships and how they are operating and managing their sites, their kingdoms, their law, their justice, or tells us something completely profound about what's happening in the Iron Age and the Romano Iron Age up here. So either way, it's a nationally significant structure, but if you have to interpret it one way or the other, it just becomes more interesting, more exciting and more perplexing. It tells us something profound about Northumberland kingship, or it tells us something profound about the Romano British Iron Age.
- [18:23]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Oh, exactly. Because, I mean, if it's Romano British.
- [18:28]
Paulo Constantine
Whoa.
- [18:28]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
They're building theaters up here north of Hadrian's Wall.
- [18:30]
Professor Sarah Semple
Whoa.
- [18:31]
Matt Lewis
But they've also choosing to do it then out of timber. I mean, why are they doing it out of timber? Why have they suddenly gone off and fell a whole load of trees to build that when they're building everything else around here in marching camps out of stone? All of these things just become slightly weirder questions. So we'll only know the answer to this when we've got the. The scientific dating to be able to know that's the reason to come back for the force visit.
- [18:51]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Thank you very much. I will. But. Okay, so here we go in the theater. And then the theater is kind of behind where we know probably the royal chambers are, and that's behind probably where the Great hall is. These are all lined out. Then over here we've got this other big pit and we're taking a look at what have we got going on over here. Because this is a huge pit that. That you've dug.
- [19:16]
Matt Lewis
So one of the. Yeah, one of the great questions that Sarah and the team wanted to look at from this from two years ago was when Brian Hope Taylor excavated and published the site, the Great hall backed into this great enclosure, this palisaded great enclosure. And as archaeologists and historians, I think any of us looked at it and went, oh. Actually, thinking about the reconstruction Hope Taylor did, that's uncomfortably close. You're coming out of the end of your Great hall, where you've got your great entrance door to be faced immediately with a massively tall palisade wall.
- [19:52]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Okay.
- [19:52]
Matt Lewis
It feels a little odd. So it was one of the first questions that Serenty wanted to ask. So that two years ago, went in just next to the Great hall and excavated a part of the. The outermost ditch of that great enclosure and found that there was Anglo Saxon features running on top of the fill of the ditch. Okay. So there was Fenced enclosures that went on top of this, and those fences were attacked, were sort of part of the enclosure of the great hall. And they did radiocarbon dating and optical luminescence dating of that ditch and got Iron Age dating material out of the bottom of that bit. So this year has been looking both at the innermost ditch further up in areas that Brian Hook Taylor did not excavate.
- [20:36]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Right.
- [20:36]
Matt Lewis
And at the terminal ends of that. So, and when we say terminal ends, what we mean is if you imagine an enclosure, it's a vast enclosure, is probably about 10 tennis courts in size to give people a sense of scale on the inside space. It's enclosed, and you've got two pairs of ditches that are recut repeatedly. They would have had a palisade, timber palisade built on top of it.
- [21:00]
Paulo Constantine
Okay.
- [21:00]
Matt Lewis
And at the end, what we call the terminal ends, Hope Taylor interpreted a loop so that these palisades joined from the outermost and the innermost would loop around in a great loop and join back up. And so this excavation has been. Look at one of those terminal ends to see what's happening with that. And what we found from that is that Hope Taylor had only exhibited part of it very slightly in his final season here.
- [21:29]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Right.
- [21:29]
Matt Lewis
So he'd done it in a rush at the end.
- [21:32]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Fair enough.
- [21:33]
Matt Lewis
Which is fair enough. I mean, he had an incredibly complicated Anglo Saxon palace to understand. And so Sarah has sort of been really re examining what he'd done and exhibiting new areas to see what the. What this is, especially having had Iron Age dating material from the other bit that they'd looked at in the previous seasons to see it. If this is truly a. An earlier feature, then something a much greater time depth to it. So it's an Iron Age complex that lies before the Anglo Saxon palace.
- [22:00]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I, I guess either way, this tells us a really important story about how kingship works in the Anglo Saxon period. Because fundamentally, you know, as you say, we've got. We have evidence that people have been here basically since year Dot. You know, as soon as, as soon as people showed up in Britain, they're like, oh, yeah, I'm having that, thank you very much. You know, and so it also makes sense in the way that we understand kingship and rulership to work in the medieval period. Because what you do to prove that you are a king is that you understand how kings operate and you go to the places where kings are in order to do your thing. So even if, you know, there is no longer a Romano amphitheater, let's say that we're going to go with that hypothesis. But you know that there was one there, right? Well, yes, you know, and they built it here probably because they're like, well, this is where there is a big old kind of palace and you're going to want to always be connected to that. So we can see this connection through time and we can see people associating this place with wealth, with prestige, where in order to be someone who is anyone in Northumbria, you need to be doing it at this site.
- [23:18]
Matt Lewis
Yes. I mean, this is it. This is it. You've got that association of power structures that goes deeply back. So we know. And you see it in Anglo Saxon burials, you see it in other Anglo Saxon passes where they will appropriate Bronze Age barrow structures in the landscape, Roman sites in the landscape, Einishes, because they're seen as powerful places. And if you're wanting to establish your control and your power over that area, that territory, those people being there, is the place that legitimizes your rule, much like inventing your genealogy to include Angus and Horse there and Caesar and Arthur and Woden and all of these mythological characters. It's the same thing in the landscape. So what you've definitely got here is we're in the shadow, as you said, of Yavering Bell, and Yevring Bell has an Iron Age operda enclosure on the top of it. So you've got a deep Iron Age landscape behind. And they know that, and they're. They're occupying this place in relation to that. And indeed, Ad Geffern as a name for this place, isn't an Old English place name. It's a. It's a Britonic Celtic place name. So Yeffren, the Ad is Latin, means by the. Yeffron is the name of the hill. It's. It means by. It's the hill of the goats. So the place name is by the hill of the goats.
- [24:36]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Ah.
- [24:37]
Matt Lewis
And so what you're doing is deliberately organizing your placement because of that landscape feature and appropriating it to show your power structure and place in the landscape.
- [24:47]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
This makes perfect sense to me. We see the church do this all the time. You know, when they're coming to England as well, you know, they'll say, oh, where's your religious site? Do you have a particular spring you're worshiping at? Do you have temples of any kind? Because guess what? There's a church there now, you know. And so of course, you do exactly the same thing with rulership.
- [25:07]
Matt Lewis
Well, exactly. And then actually that bit of here, of this site with that conversion and that rulership, you know, we're sat on the site behind us is where the evidence for a pagan shrine, a pagan temple probably was.
- [25:18]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Wow.
- [25:19]
Matt Lewis
In the quarrying in front of us to our left is where the River Glen is. That's the site 36 days where Paul Linus was baptizing and catechizing. And we told by Bede that this is that place. And then in front of us around this great enclosure is the evidence for the first church on the site. So we have a church building, we have Christian burials, we also have pagan. We also have the river where it's happening. So everything's happening here at the start of that sort of merging of Christianity with power structures in the Anglo Saxon world in the north.
- [25:50]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I guess that makes sense because. Well, a. You need to go ahead and get right to the top. That's the number one thing you want to do with conversion is you go to the king. You go to the Queen.
- [25:58]
Scott Hanson
Yeah.
- [25:58]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You know. Well, usually actually the queen's already done.
- [26:00]
Matt Lewis
Absolutely, the queen's done. It's about the woman.
- [26:02]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
She's already Christian, you know, and. And you know, and you know how wives are.
- [26:05]
Matt Lewis
Yeah.
- [26:06]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Am I right? Am I right? Yeah.
- [26:08]
Matt Lewis
She's taking you there.
- [26:09]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah.
- [26:09]
Matt Lewis
And she's the one that's bringing the story here. She's the, you know, for our Christian story here, Queen Ethelbert, massively significant. I mean, for me, she is. She is one of the most important figures in 7th century England because she's bringing. She's marrying King Edwin, she's bringing Edwin to the throne here. She's bringing Paulinus with her when she comes to those conversions, she's overseeing all of that conversion. And then at the point that Paulinus and. Well, at the point that Edwin loses his kingdom, Paulinus and Ethelbert flee. And then she goes back down to Kent and founds a monastery and she's there sponsoring Christianity, running this massive monastery for the next 30 years. She is right at the heart of this.
- [26:49]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
It just goes to show you how much power women really did wield at the time. People, you'd like to use the term soft power. I'm sorry, that's just power.
- [26:57]
Matt Lewis
No, it's just power.
- [26:58]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That's just power. Being able to say, guess what, everybody, you're a different religion now. Come on.
- [27:03]
Matt Lewis
Exact. And I think that's what's important of understanding a site like this and a great hall and the operation of a great hall is especially inside that hall. It's. It's much royal power of a woman, of the queen. That matters as the king. She's orchestrating where everybody is. She knows everybody in that room. She's giving out the first cup. She's orchestrating how the feast goes. It's. It's her kingdom as much as it is the king's.
- [27:26]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I'll tell you what, you want to go to that feast, and I mean, I want to go to that feast. You're not getting in the doors unless you got baptized. So it's like down to the river for you, first thing.
- [27:34]
Matt Lewis
Exactly.
- [27:34]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Get your baptism and then you can come party.
- [27:38]
Matt Lewis
Exactly that, exactly that.
- [27:40]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I mean, well, gosh, here we still are, you know, hundreds of years later, hanging out in this field. They've got me, you know, it's like she's done it, you know, she's done it again, you know, And I think it's that.
- [27:51]
Matt Lewis
It's that understanding of this site and what makes it so special is that that sense of the power structures and the layout and the space. And you still feel it now when you. When you stand in the footprint of where the great hall was and you look towards grandstand or towards great enclosure, you can sense that it's. It's performance and it's deliberate and it's intentional. And your approach to the king and the queen and the royal court is imbued. It has all of that power with it. You have to be invited into that great hall. You have to have done your convention, you have to have. And then you have to be invited beyond the great hall to their royal residence, to it, sort of an inner audience with them. It's a very deliberately organized space for that.
- [28:36]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I'll tell you what, if it is as impressive as it is, when I'm looking at a ditch in a FIELD in the 21st century, imagine how incredible it would have been for someone in the seventh century.
- [28:49]
Matt Lewis
You know, one of the things you've got to imagine as well is when they're here in court, seasonal summer palace, they're here for two to three months of the year. They're not just in these buildings. People are coming to be around this space. So the majority of people who are here when the court is in attendance are probably camping in tents around it. So it's not just a field with a great hall and these spaces in this has got thousands of people around it in a summit. It's like being at sort of the Anglo Saxon equivalent of Glastonbury with the king and the queen in the middle of it. Yes, you Know, it's got that feeling about it, it'll have that energy about it and it's going to be an intensely densely populated space.
- [29:27]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
But this is something that you guys are still doing now, right? Like, you had the Archaeology Fest this year, you were setting up tents, you're having people really kind of look into how people might have been living at the site then as well.
- [29:40]
Paulo Constantine
Yeah.
- [29:40]
Matt Lewis
So we, yeah, we organized, with the Geffen Trust, with the university, the Festival of Archaeology celebrations. We did a whole weekend with reenactors camping. We did looking at objects from the museum, looking at how we do this sort of archaeology for people. And it was really special because we were studying the footprint of these great halls, of these buildings with the reenactors in costume. They were reading excerpts of Beowulf. You know, it's a really special. There's something just excitingly cool about that. You might be the first person to hear Beowulf performed in that space, in that hall in 1400 years. That's just cool.
- [30:13]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That is. I mean, like, look, you don't have to tell me twice, right? This is what is so exciting and I think what is so great about being able to bring together the field of experiential archeology and the people who are really doing reenacting, who are seeing how these spaces would have worked with the actual archaeology, with actually just getting down there and digging the pit.
- [30:33]
Matt Lewis
Well, this is it, because it is also, you know, it's interesting archeology. Now, when you've got a hole in the ground and you're looking at it, and that's exciting. We're learning new most of the air. This is a field. So for us, it's why we have the museum and why are the objects there, but also why we do those festivals and reenactments is reenactors allow us to see the colour and to imagine more broadly what this world would have looked and felt like and sounded like. And that's as important as understanding, you know, the building alignment and what was in the ground. It's. How did it look and feel? What did somebody in that space do in the past that's similar to what I do today?
- [31:08]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
As Chris Ferguson has just explained, the discoveries made at Ying bell in the 1950s by Brian Hope Taylor revealed a complex royal site unlike any other in the British Isles. But there's still so much we don't know. That's why archaeologists returned this summer to AD Geffrin, digging deeper into its mysteries. I spoke next with Professor Sarah Semple from Durham University, who's leading a new phase of excavations at the site about AD Geffrin's vast timber hulls, its mysterious grandstand, and potential traces of burning that may mark the site's dramatic end.
- [31:47]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Ah, Sarah, our intrepid archaeologist. It's so exciting to see you again.
- [31:52]
Professor Sarah Semple
Yeah, this is incredibly exciting.
- [31:54]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Oh. So I have been here before with you and we've talked a little bit about the specifics of the site, but can you tell me how we came to find it in the first.
- [32:04]
Paulo Constantine
Yeah.
- [32:04]
Professor Sarah Semple
So, you know, this is a site that has so many firsts. So it was one of the early sites recorded by air photography just after the war, and that showed a whole series of crop marks that people thought initially were maybe monastic site, maybe Roman. But it's Brian Hope Taylor, really, in the very early 50s, who put together the words of Bede, writing the 8th century about a big royal entourage and palace and meeting up at the evering with the crop marks and began excavations here and discovered this seminal early medieval palace complex.
- [32:53]
Scott Hanson
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- [33:24]
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- [34:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And it's huge, isn't it? I mean, it is.
- [34:10]
Professor Sarah Semple
You know, every year that we dig here, we're always taken aback by the scale of the archaeology. You can look at it and plan, but when you're actually excavating, you really get a feel for just how enormous the investment was in terms of holes and in terms of the layout of the site.
- [34:25]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You've been digging here for years now, haven't you?
- [34:27]
Professor Sarah Semple
Well, we started here a while back with geophysics and Sort of looking at remote sensing, aerial photography, you know, doing the usual sort of background work. And then we started in 2021 and we've worked on three seasons since then.
- [34:40]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Wow. Okay, so this year I'm really excited because you're working on my favorite part, which is you were actually excavating it more particularly kind of around the edges of things. You know, we knew where the Great hall was because of, well, Hope Taylor's work and your earlier work. What are we digging up this summer?
- [35:01]
Professor Sarah Semple
So just to think a little bit about the past seasons. You know, we're interested in the periphery of the site, as you say, we're interested in adding to the story and we're also interested in the time depth as well, so putting a context around the early medieval activity. But this year we have extended our work around the Great enclosure. But incredibly excitingly, we're also looking at the theater or the grandstands. So this really unique, enigmatic structure that Ying's so well known for.
- [35:30]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And you've been doing a lot of work on that. Very specifically, I could see, I mean, it looks like you can actually see the different structures of the stand itself here. Like where the rose would have been.
- [35:42]
Professor Sarah Semple
Absolutely. So, you know, as far as we knew from the publication, Hope Taylor had excavated the entire set of foundation trenches for the structure. But in the archival material we looked at, we had hunch that we could see snow covered areas that were in situ deposits. That's unexcavated material. So we came back and we've been really fortunate. We've located those areas and we've been able to excavate previously untested parts of the complex and actually see some of the original sort of backfill and material in those foundation trenches for the grandstand.
- [36:18]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
What I can see here is these sort of curved rows and that would be where people were sitting. And it seems like there are piles of maybe rocks or something that. What would that have been doing?
- [36:30]
Professor Sarah Semple
Yeah, so there are essentially nine foundation trenches and they go for a small one at the front, increase in size, a stage back. The idea being they're holding big upright timbers, supporting seating, so elevated seats. So it's a bit like a wedge rather than an amphitheatre, but you know, something that would have supported people sitting and watching a performance in the excavation. And looking at the institute material, you know, we have really interesting kind of collapses of gravel and stone within there, and we can tell that that's from where the timbers have been pulled out. So we're looking at the you know, the sharp sided foundation trenches for these big timber supports and then actually those timbers being removed, all of the gravel collapsing in. We can see that those have been left open for a while as well.
- [37:16]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Any idea why we would have been pulling the timber out?
- [37:18]
Professor Sarah Semple
I think it's really interesting. We know that, you know, timber's important, it gets reused a lot. You know, we find that in the medieval period as well. But I'm, you know, I'm really interested in how little additional material is in those fills. And it does make me wonder just how short lived this structure is that actually it's built, has a relatively short life and it's pulled down.
- [37:41]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You know, this is the trouble with archaeology. You find all these cool things. It's so enigmatic. And then we're just left with the mystery at the end.
- [37:50]
Professor Sarah Semple
We've got some lovely deposits in it where they're quite charcoal rich, lots of tiny flecking. We know that Hike Taylor argued there were two sort of big burning episodes on the site and that that, that was, may have led to the site being abandoned completely as a palace complex. So I'm interested if those trenches are open and we get this kind of collation of windblown charcoal, whether we are looking, we might in that section have that sort of endpoint for the settlement.
- [38:18]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Okay. So I think one of these things that happens though is that things do burn down. Especially, you know, you got a wooden great hall that can burn down, you know, so I guess, yeah, the charcoal blowing in there, that, that would make sense. But also, I mean, things burn down all the time. Would you really necessarily leave just because of like one big fire and you, you get rid of like your entire like summer party house?
- [38:40]
Professor Sarah Semple
Yeah, yeah, I think it, I think it's fascinating. So I think the, the traditional argument is that those burning episodes are big raids. And we've got some interesting additional archaeology that we've excavated, but Hope Taylor did, which are string burials and indications that there may be a major, you know, disaster on the site of some kind or a big conflagration or a raid, hence the site might be abandoned and you know, the center of power moves to millfields. But, you know, that's a lot of, that's just conjecture. What we can see in our excavations is indications both from previous season, this one, that there are episodes of burning. Some of those, however, are prehistoric in date, not early medieval.
- [39:23]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I see. I mean, how many people have you had working out here? We're here in the final day of the dig because I like to show up and see everything fresh. Yeah, you know, no big deal. I want to see the goods. How many people were digging these holes also?
- [39:38]
Professor Sarah Semple
Yeah, so we generally dig. A relatively small team had, I think, 14 people here this year. We have our students from Durham University. The sites managed by the Geffen Trust are in partnership with the Geffrin Trust. And we have, you know, a team of supervisors come back year after year, which is brilliant. So people who have come and dug here have stayed because it's really, you know, it's a really evocative place to work and it's such a, you know, a site full of interests and sort of stories. So people do want to come back.
- [40:07]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You know, myself included. Sarah, thank you so much for making time for me today. This is just an absolute pleasure.
- [40:13]
Professor Sarah Semple
No, it's absolutely great and, you know, it delights me every time people are interested in this site.
- [40:20]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
However, the story doesn't stop in the soil. After spending the morning on that windswept field with Chris and Sarah, I took the short drive down to the Adgafferin Museum in Wooller. It's a bright and beautiful space that brings the story of the royal site to life. Among the displays, you can see the treasures unearthed from the excavations at Yerring Bell, but also Anglo Saxon finds from across the northeast. Jewelry, glasswork and tools that help us imagine what it was like to live and work in the early medieval world. To explore what these objects reveal, I sat down with Paulo Constantine, who helps care for this remarkable collection.
- [41:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, I've taken this short drive from the field below Yevringbel to the beautiful museum to see what has been found in the field. So we're leaving behind the intrepid archaeologists to continue being windswept. But I am here with Paula. You're actually going to tell me about the wonderful things you have in the museum that you found in the field.
- [41:26]
Paulo Constantine
Well, the archaeology in the field is not fast because of the preservation on the site and also how we think certainly the Saxons wound up the site at the end of its life. But we do have some absolutely amazing things in our museum. We like to say we are small but perfectly formed.
- [41:49]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You do have a beautiful collection here, but what are some of your favorite things?
- [41:54]
Paulo Constantine
My ultimate favourite is the small cabinet with the weaving and women's things in it.
- [42:01]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yes, women's things, Yes.
- [42:04]
Paulo Constantine
I love that it is really small, but it's really important. I think with the textiles in particular. We've got some gorgeous gold, we've got jewelry, we've got hanging bowls, but this is something that every single person has a relationship with. Every single person had fabric, wore clothes and would have had some form of relationship with this. In fact, fine cloth is the work of the higher status women. So it's not just lower status women, it is everybody. And in fact, the likes of spindle wells are ubiquitous in any early medieval site across the country. Although we don't have a spindle well in there, we've got some spectacular loom weights. They do just look like stone donut and it does get commented on just about by anyone. But it is the production of fabric and that is a daily task year in, year out for people of the early medieval period.
- [43:06]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think that's such an important point because when we think about something like a summer palace, we're thinking about people just hanging out, having big feasts. But this is the medieval period. Work still needs to happen all the time. So yeah, you have your loom set up as well.
- [43:22]
Paulo Constantine
We've got the workshops and there's, there's workshops there that very clearly show us that loom weights are being produced on site. The loom weights that we've got upstairs are from a little site very close to Aldgaffren where we have another sunken featured building there. And quite a number of these loom weights. So it would be nice to think that that particular village was providing textiles for the royal party when they were in residence, who knows.
- [43:52]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
But also you've got these great needles here and one of the things that really strikes me about them is that they're much larger than their modern equivalents. A lot longer than a needle that I would use now.
- [44:04]
Paulo Constantine
They are, and they're very square headed. I don't know whether the interpretation bothers me, it's not something I've used, but we would think that that sort of shape would tear a fabric going through it. And I would suggest the possibility of them having other uses as well and not just needles. The little pin beside them. Considering we're looking at a time period where we don't have zips, we don't have buttons or toggles. The, the idea of pinning any form of your, your clothing together with a pin is something that everybody would have been familiar with. So you'd have had all sorts of pins in different sizes from different materials for different purposes. And again, this one, I like the fact that we, we don't really know what it's for. It's small and it's bent, it's obviously been very well used and it is just a very human thing. To have.
- [45:20]
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- [45:33]
Paulo Constantine
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Paulo Constantine
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- [45:50]
Scott Hanson
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- [46:35]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
When Eve hit on something that I think is really exciting about the work that's happening at the museum here. Because you just said you're not sure about what the uses of these are because you haven't used them. Because you've used a lot of the things, haven't you? You used a lot of the things that you found here. Can you tell me a little bit about the experiential side of the archaeology?
- [46:54]
Paulo Constantine
There's an awful lot of things that you can see in cabinets and that you can look at in books that people don't use today. We don't know how they're used. And I like to make artifacts and reuse them. There's a lot of people out there who do that. So it gives you the experience of walking in their shoes. How to do something, whether it's something that's not straightforward. When you're looking at a wear pattern on a tool, has it been used by even somebody that's right handed or left handed can be used? You know, something that is valuable knowledge. For instance, a lot of people wouldn't know that a quill pen is right handed or left handed. And it is probably the same with needles. We know that spinning relies on people being right handed or left handed for the plying. And we like to have a left hander in every group of spinners so that they can naturally ply your wool.
- [47:55]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That's so great. One of the things that is really special about the museum is here we have all of these great artifacts that had been found, but you also have the recreation of the great hall, which is just so incredible. But for me, the thing that's really exciting is how you and the team have actually spent time using the materials to make all of the hangings, to make the pillows and a. They're beautiful. That's really. That's really great. But I remember having a conversation with you early on where you were saying, and now we know how long it takes to make these things. And that's just incredible because the man hours that go into decorating a great hall, that's something that just gets lost.
- [48:41]
Paulo Constantine
So it's mostly the Ackley Reenactment Society. It's Wendy and Stuart who oversaw the production of the wall hangings that we've got there. I'll just say we have three behind the thrones that are based on a stone cross in Cumbria. We four on our side walls that are based on the Book of Durrow and the Gospels. And then we have two pagan ones based on images from the Sutton Hoo helmet. And from conception to sourcing all the materials, getting the colors right and sitting down and doing the stitching, it took them the best part of two years to produce those. Time is something that we don't always consider when we're looking at artifacts, but time is something that really needs to be experienced in an early medieval way.
- [49:33]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
But, you know, that really tells us a story about opulence. It really tells us a story about how wealthy this place was. Because if you have the amount of time that it can take people to just make, you know, really nice wall hangings and they're still going to be looked after, they're going to be fed, that tells us that you're in a really prosperous place and a really well off society.
- [49:58]
Paulo Constantine
Absolutely. Because you'll have somebody else that can take care of the mundanities for you. So you're going to have somebody that's going to fetch your wood in and cook your food and sort out your bedding and any transportation and your animals. And you certainly, as a higher status person will be able to sit there with your ladies and a group of ladies and a guy in a cayum and do your work and show that off. It is an incredibly visual society in the early medieval. And from the instant somebody sees you, they need to know where you stand in that society.
- [50:40]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That's a really interesting point. We see all these things in the finds that you have from the site. You know, it looks like we've got.
- [50:48]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
Some really cool knives.
- [50:50]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I really appreciate that there's the knives themselves, but also these remade ones so that you can know what that looks like. But also these some pretty cool belt buckles. All right. Like, come on. I love that because that hasn't changed a whole lot over the centuries. We're still buckling belts in the same old way.
- [51:06]
Paulo Constantine
Absolutely. If it isn't broke, you don't fix it. We've got some design changes over time. Very little. It's more the pattern than the actual way that the thing works. So you will recognize that. You will recognize the belt buckle from the early medieval as being virtually identical to one that we'll use today. The only difference there is that probably used in different ways. You will not now hold your socks up with a small strap and belt buckle, whereas they would do then. I mean, obviously elastic doesn't exist for them.
- [51:40]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
To be fair, we were holding socks up that way for quite some time.
- [51:43]
Paulo Constantine
Absolutely, yes.
- [51:46]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Victorian's still doing the same thing, you know, but. Okay. One of the other things that I think is really special that you've got here is you found a cast of a Frankish coin. And this, to me is so interesting is, you know, obviously the. The coin is gone now. Rip to the coin. But what we can tell about this is we've got a society well enough connected up here in Northumbria that they've got coins from down on the continent. And that just says so much to me.
- [52:22]
Paulo Constantine
Well, we are quite a rural county now, but from Bede and from later writings, we know that the royal parties and people who are traveling are still using Roman roads. The Roman trade networks are still open and still running, despite the fact that Romans themselves are long gone by this period. There is a hint with the Suttonhoo Byzantine bucket that maybe older sons are going off onto the continent to learn how familiar things are done. And we've certainly got that connection here. So we've got the Roman road, we've got the harbour at Bamborough, and the sea is a superhighway at this point in time. The sea and the rivers network. You can actually navigate a boat to get up to Mailman, where the next palace was built after Radgepharan was abandoned. And that's only about a mile away from where Edgefferin is today. So you have the potential for any continental sea trade and the results to get to within a mile of Edgar in itself. So just because the king is traveling does not mean he won't have his court and his comforts and the trade and ambassadors coming to see him where he is. We know that Edwin's queen comes from Kent, and Kent is extremely well connected on the continent. They bring Paulinus. Paulinus. Being a Roman Catholic bishop and having the backing and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church is really, really important and continues to be important. In early medieval Northumbria, we have very great connections between the joint monasteries of Monk Weirmouth and Jarrow, constantly sending gifts to the Pope. So there is transport and travel right throughout France into Spain and certainly down to Italy and to Rome constantly.
- [54:23]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think this is such an important point because it's so easy for people to think that the early medieval world in particular is cut off, that these are all these tiny places and all you need to do is come to a place like this, hear the stories about how there are people from Rome who are here, see that there are coins from France that are here. And it really makes you understand that this is still in the midst of a world that is thriving, absolutely thriving.
- [54:54]
Paulo Constantine
And expanding, and certainly based on trade.
- [54:59]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Because what. And so what are we trading up here? So we've got all of these wonderful cloths, for example, textiles. Do you think that is something that's going to be getting sent?
- [55:08]
Paulo Constantine
So Northumbria has a reputation for having very good, specifically woolen textiles. We know in roll from the area around Hadrian's Wall that the cloaks were worth more than gold when they were exported to Rome during the Roman period. So the knowledge is here for creating exceptionally good and waterproof textiles. And after you've spent time on the field this morning, you'll know that that's quite an important thing for us here in the north.
- [55:42]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Look.
- [55:44]
Paulo Constantine
So we develop breed of sheep and we have the cheviot sheep that provides wool that is very good for this sort of fabric, for being waterproof, windproof, and it's probably something that would be exported. It certainly is exported slightly later on. And we see the monasteries sending vast quantities of woolen cloth abroad for an income up here. And there's lead from the North Pennines, which is still, at that point, part of Northumbria. A very important commodity at the time.
- [56:19]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I mean, trade. To be trading anything, though, is. Is really showing what is important about this area, though. You know, these are people who not only have enough money and time to be creating luxury goods, they have enough of them that they can trade them.
- [56:37]
Paulo Constantine
Absolutely. And we will. I suppose one of the other things that we are exporting is religion and the foundation of monastic houses throughout Northumbria. And then the synod of. After the Synod of Whitby, the creation of The Catholic state, which takes over the whole country.
- [56:56]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That's a really good point. Yeah. I mean, because we do think about these things. All you need to do is say, you know, Northumbria to people and they're going to be thinking of the holy island, they'll be thinking of Lindisfarne. But we do have this tendency to kind of think of that as a Viking age. But it's like. No, the point is the Vikings burnt it down, you know, who built it in the first place. Yeah.
- [57:20]
Paulo Constantine
And, you know, the influence starts off as being a Celtic church, very much Irish influenced. And then after Oswy and the Synod of Whitby, we get that Catholic influence. And again, it's that trade, it's that Rome belongs to us now and Rome history is our history and we're part of something so much bigger. So way back in the early 600s, into the 700s, we feel like we are part of something much bigger, part European back then.
- [57:57]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think it's great. You've got all these wonderful things actually from the site, you know, and thanks to the gaffer and trust for making this possible. But you got, you got, you got some other pretty little treasures here. Can we talk about this glass beaker?
- [58:11]
Paulo Constantine
Yeah. We have this absolutely amazing intact claw beaker on loan from the British Museum and it's come back north for the first time in a long time. And it's a peculiar thing. We have the replica there and I think you've had that in your hands and you can feel it's not an easy thing to pick up.
- [58:32]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. So this is, let's say it's about a foot high altogether. It's of this beautiful blue glass and it's got, I don't know, they almost look like octopus arms or something that comes out of them.
- [58:46]
Paulo Constantine
It bubbles with a bit of a leg at the end that joins back onto the glass.
- [58:52]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
It's just a phenomenal object.
- [58:55]
Paulo Constantine
It is a phenomenal object. It is made out of recycled Roman glass. And we think it was put together in Germany and brought over here. It was found in Castle Eden in County Durham. And like I said to you before, it is intact. If we were in a position to be able to put liquids in it today, it would still hold liquid. And it is quite a fragile item, that extremely high status. When you set the table for dinner in the Anglo Saxon world, you do not give everybody a glass. This is something that would be on the high table. It would be very special. It would be a showpiece.
- [59:41]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I mean, it would be a showpiece now. And if you look at the city, absolutely, it's a sense of a vase, like, I'm just thinking, you know, what am I going to drink out of this wine?
- [59:49]
Paulo Constantine
But this is part of the. Of the ritual of the whole, and the idea that everybody will drink from one cup and once it's full, it's difficult to put it down. Often Anglo Saxon glassware that hasn't been pinched from the room and kept intact, but stuff that's been made during the Anglo Saxon period tends to have really, really narrow bases, as if they're echoing the form of a drinking hall. So it's not easy to put it down. It's something to be passed, something to be shared. It's part of that ritual of being in the hall and really forming a war band, forming your cabinet, forming your followers and making them into people who will be loyal to you. And loyalty and pledges in the hall is a very important part of the proceedings.
- [60:46]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I mean, I think that it's such an incredible piece and it's lovely to see it in the context of the Great hall, you know, so being able to picture how these people might have been setting their tables is really important, you know. Then, Also, come on, what's going on with this cross over here, this gorgeous gold cross.
- [61:06]
Paulo Constantine
A gold cross, the old cross now that is on loan from Berwick Museum and it's really small. We do get people coming in thinking it's going to be an awful lot bigger. This thing's only about two and a half, maybe three centimeters long, made out of gold. It was found by metal detectorists in 2019, and much like Mud Larking might be at London, it was found on the banks of the River Tweed. And I mean, good luck that they found it. I mean, it is such a tiny thing. It's across and it looks upside down. It's got the shorter end at the bottom rather than at the top. But if you're wearing that as a necklace and you pick it up at the bottom to kiss it for devotions, it is the right way up. It's not as if they're all being Satanists at those point, in ties with the reverse crucifix.
- [62:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I feel like that's not what was happening.
- [62:06]
Paulo Constantine
Not at all. Now, the other thing is, it has three little inscribed equal armed crosses on the arms. And we know that if there is a name with an equal armed cross after it, it denotes some sort of religious person. So a bishop, possibly, or somebody with religious office. And you would expect from having something gold that they're higher up in the church rather than lower down. And it has a runic inscription on it. There are two lots of conjoined runes in it. And the conjoined runes denote some sort of mysticism or magic on their own. And this name has two sets on it and it's said to say either Eardruth, which is a name that is not known anywhere, or either. And Eard Wulf is known to be the last bishop of Lindisfarne. He's the man that took Cuthbert's final remains away when the Vikings were attacking Lindisfarne. So Eardwulf, it said, takes Cuthbert by boat up the Tweed to Norham, a little bit further up. Now, this may be a leap of faith, but it would be lovely to think that this was one of his.
- [63:27]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Personal possessions, you know, it also would explain how you go around losing something as valuable as a gold cross at the time in the kerfuffle of trying to get St Cuthbert out of there, you know.
- [63:39]
Paulo Constantine
Well, absolutely. And that cross itself has had a bit of a hard life because you can see if you look at the top part of the cross, that it had a break in, had an original holder or hanging that's come off and there's a little nick at the top and it's been re drilled and the drilling goes through the rune. So it's obviously been pr. Precious enough to somebody. It's broken before and been precious enough to be reused again. Anglo Saxon recycling.
- [64:08]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, look, it's a lucky dip. And I'm choosing to believe this is aerial cross. That's what I'm going with it. Why not? That's our prerogative, I think. Look, this is such a special collection and such a great museum to help people really understand how people would have been living at this point in time. I think that one of the things that the museum here in Wohler does really well is it provides the context that ordinary people wouldn't have to be able to understand what this world would look like, what it would sound like, and how you would use these particular objects in context. So you're doing this incredible job bringing the past back to life.
- [64:51]
Paulo Constantine
Well, we'd like to think so, yeah. It's not just all about the kings and the bishops, it's about their support network and the people that make what they do possible.
- [65:01]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You are a woman after my own heart.
- [65:06]
Paulo Constantine
Well, lovely to meet you and lovely that you could come up here.
- [65:09]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
Speaking with Paula, you really feel the human side of the weavers, the craft workers, the travelers and traders who sustained this royal court. Every object points to how Anglo Saxon Northumbria was a community defined by its connections and creativity. This was no Dark age and add Geffrin, no mere isolated frontier. It was a part of a vast, vibrant world linked by trade and religion and immersed in a shared culture with the rest of early medieval Britain and beyond. It's easy to imagine the palace of King Edwin as a distant, shadowy memory. Memory. Especially now, when all that remains is a farmer's field like any other. But as we've heard today, excavations by Durham University and the Ad Geffrin Trust continue to reveal the scale and sophistication of the site, while the museum, just a few miles away, ensures that these discoveries are accessible, bringing history to life for thousands of visitors a year. Thank you to Chris, Sarah and Paula for coming on Gone Medieval and for inviting me up north to see for myself the groundbreaking finds they are uncovering. You can explore more on this world by visiting the A.D. geffern Museum in Wooler. It's got a whiskey distillery too.
- [66:35]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Go on, you know you want to. And of course, thank you for listening.
- [66:40]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
To Gone Medieval from history hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries as well as ad free podcasts by signing up@historyhit.com subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.
- [67:27]
Scott Hanson
Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds of with Liberty Mutual.
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Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Fascinating.
- [67:38]
Scott Hanson
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [67:41]
Narrator/Host (possibly Eleanor Jaenega or another narrator)
Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [67:44]
Scott Hanson
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