1,400-year-old temple discovered in Suffolk Royal Colony

A possibly pre-Christian temple dating from the time of the East Anglian kings, around 1,400 years ago, has been discovered at Rendlesham, near Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, by a team of archaeologists led by researchers from UCL.

The discovery was made over the summer by Suffolk County Council’s Rendlesham Revealed community archeology project. Last year the project unearthed the remains of a large wooden royal hall, confirming it was a royal seat of East Anglian kings.

This year’s excavations have also uncovered evidence of refined metalwork associated with royal occupation, including a mold used to cast decorative horse harnesses similar to that at the nearby princely cemetery at Sutton Hoo.

The royal complex is more than twice as large as previously thought. It is delimited by a peripheral ditch 1.5 kilometers long which surrounds an area of ​​15 hectares, the equivalent of around twenty football fields.

The royal residence was part of a larger settlement complex covering 50 hectares, which is unique in the archeology of 5th-8th century England in its scale and complexity.

This year’s breakthrough caps a three-year excavation campaign that has defied expectations and transformed understanding of the period.

The project’s lead academic advisor, Professor Christopher Scull (UCL Institute of Archaeology), said: “The results of the excavations at Rendlesham speak strikingly of the power and wealth of the East Anglian kings, as well than the sophistication of the company they led. , or house of worship, provides rare and remarkable evidence of the practice at a royal site of the pre-Christian beliefs that underpinned early English society.

“Its distinctive and substantial foundations indicate that one of the buildings, 10 meters long and 5 meters wide, was unusually tall and sturdy for its size, so perhaps it was built for a special purpose. It most similar to buildings elsewhere in England which are considered temples or houses of worship, so they may have been used for pre-Christian worship by the early kings of the East Angles.

The site of Rendlesham is identified as an East Anglian royal center by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede reports that King Redwald, who died c. In 625 AD and whose grave is believed to be that of the ship Sutton Hoo, he maintained a temple in which there were altars to pre-Christian gods alongside an altar to Christ – although he doesn’t specifically say it was in Rendlesham.

This summer’s excavations also revealed:

• The foundations of three new wooden buildings (including the probable house of worship, or temple)
• Evidence of metalworking in the 7th century, including the discovery of waste materials and a fired clay mold for making decorative horse harnesses.
• Two tombs of unknown date
• Precincts and evidence of earlier settlements and activities from the Neolithic (fourth millennium BC), Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman periods
• A WWII searchlight location.

These archaeological finds show that Rendlesham has been a favored location for human settlement and activity for 6,000 years, from the fourth millennium BC to the present, but was most important when it was a royal center from the 6th in the 8th century AD.

The most recent archeology discovery was a World War II searchlight site, part of a searchlight battery recorded in US Air Force aerial photographs from December 1943.

Councilor Melanie Vigo di Gallidoro, Suffolk County Council’s deputy cabinet member for protected landscapes and archaeology, said: “This year’s results complement three seasons of fieldwork which confirms the international significance of the archeology of Rendlesham and its fundamental importance to our knowledge of ancient England.

“Everyone involved in the project can be proud to have achieved something remarkable together. Over 200 volunteers from the local community were involved this year, bringing the total number of volunteers to over 600 for the program of work three-year fieldwork including those from Suffolk Family Carers, Suffolk Mind and children from local primary schools in Rendlesham, Eyke and Wickham Market.

The excavations have now been completed and the site’s trenches have been backfilled, with work to analyze the discoveries already underway, with provisional results expected in 2024.