By way of A Blog About History, a story about a valuable set of over 400 photographs of the Sutton Hoo excavations:
Like the original ship burial, this remarkable find has laid unseen and forgotten for a long time. Tucked away in a dusty storeroom were a couple of fairly nondescript cardboard boxes.
Inside these unprepossessing packages were a photographic treasure trove which sheds new light on the discovery and the excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.
Inside the boxes were more than 400 photographs taken during the summer of 1939 by two visiting school teachers Barbara Wagstaff and Mercie Lack.
It is believed that they had contacts with The British Museum which is why they were given access to the site but very little is known about them.
They took more than 400, highly detailed photographs of the dig — far more than the 29 official shots taken by the British Museum photographer.
The pictures have laid forgotten until now; as a selection of them are forming the centrepiece of a new exhibition at Sutton Hoo.
It’s hard to believe that the British Museum didn’t have a more comprehensive formal photographic record of the excavations.
