Archaeologists say six plank-lined graves could be part of burial ground of early Christian community dating from between the 7th and 9th centuries

Six plank-lined Anglo-Saxon graves, believed to be the oldest of their kind found in Britain, have been discovered on a waterlogged site in a river valley in Norfolk, alongside 81 coffins made from hollowed oak trunks.

Archaeologists think the startlingly well-preserved graves were part of the burial ground of an early Christian community, dating from between the 7th and 9th centuries. Tree ring dating is being carried out to establish a more precise age.

Finding timber graves of this age is extremely rare, due to wood’s tendency to leave little more than a decayed smudge in the earth.

The river Wensum, which laps the edge of the discovery site and flows through the village of Great Ryburgh, has changed course over the last millennium, possibly destroying evidence of Anglo-Saxon homes and farm buildings at the site.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial view of plank-lined graves and coffins made from hollowed tree trunks. Photograph: MoLA/PA

Although much of the human remains has been crushed under many hundreds of years of soil, some of the best-preserved bones may be able to give a wealth of evidence about who the people were, what they died of, and where they came from.



Traces of a timber structure thought to have once been a church have also been found. The graves were dug in an east-west alignment, and marked with timber posts, but unlike Roman or prehistoric burials there were no grave goods with the dead, suggesting that they were Christians.

James Fairclough, who led the excavation for the Museum of London’s archaeology unit (MoLA), said: “The combination of acidic sand and alkaline water created the perfect conditions for the skeletons and wooden graves to survive, revealing remarkable details of Christian Anglo-Saxon practices.”

There was nothing in the historical record to suggest that a sizeable Anglo-Saxon community existed in a fallow field behind landowner Gary Boyce’s house. The medieval church of St Andrew, with its distinctive round tower, is several hundred metres away in the centre of the village.

However, as soon as preparatory work began for a fishing lake, local archaeologist Matthew Champion spotted Saxon pottery in the soil, and MoLA was called in for a full excavation.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Archaeologists examining graves lined with wooden planks. Photograph: MoLA/PA

The best of the timbers from the pits and the oak coffins will be preserved at Norwich Castle museum, where curator Tim Pestell said they were fascinating evidence from such an early period of Christianity.



“The site was in use in the heyday of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia, and positioned next to a strategic river cross. As with much of East Anglia at this early date, we have no documentary sources that relate to this site, and so it is archaeological finds like this that are crucial in helping us to understand the development of the kingdom.”

Fairclough said that although analysis continued, there did not appear to be any difference in status between the burials in plank-lined pits and those in the oak trunk coffins. The pit burials were carefully dug graves that were lined with expertly shaped planks. The bodies were laid in and then the grave was roofed with more planks. The log coffins would each have taken up to four days’ work to hollow out – a laborious technique known from much earlier burials in bronze age Europe. The two types of grave are mixed across the site, and it is not yet clear if they date from different periods.

There are records of log coffins being found on other sites in the late 19th century, but this is the first time that any have been excavated using modern archaeological techniques.

• This article was amended on 16 November 2016. An editing error resulted in the text and headline implying that the oldest Anglo-Saxon graves in the UK had been found. They are believed to be the oldest plank-lined graves.