You are there: Eyewitness at Sutton Hoo

In an article published by The Telegraph, John Preston relates the story of how his archaeologist aunt unearthed the Anglo Saxon gold at Sutton Hoo in the 1930s.

From the article:

"Clearly, more help was required and Phillips recruited two archaeologist friends, Stuart Piggott and his young wife Peggy – my aunt – to come and lend a hand. On 21 July, just two days after she had arrived at Sutton Hoo, Peggy Piggott was working away in the centre of the ship when she uncovered a small pyramid-shaped object, intricately fashioned out of gold and garnets.

Later that afternoon she found another one. ‘Of course, from that moment we were immensely excited,’ she recalled when she was interviewed for a BBC documentary in the 1960s.

This, however, was only the start. The next day they found an array of treasure: beautiful gold plaques patterned with birds and animals, gold coins and an enormous gold buckle. That evening, when the excavation team returned to their hotel in Woodbridge, a man came up to Stuart Piggott in the bar and asked him how he was getting on: ‘Well, old boy, found any gold today?’"