Anglo-Saxon Princely Burial at Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea

In 2003 archaeologists discovered an intact princely burial between busy Priory Crescent and the railway line near Priory Park in Prittlewell. A find of international significance, this is the richest and most important Anglo-Saxon burial found since the 1939 discovery of the great ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. The lavishly furnished wooden chamber beneath a mound contained the coffin of a high-status man, evidently a Christian, who died at the end of the 6th century AD. The results of years of study of the excavated evidence are described and illustrated here to provide an account of the burial and the grave goods, and the information they give us about the East Saxon kingdom, where the man lived, and its contacts with Kent, Francia and the Christian Mediterranean.