Painstaking excavation by Brown and his team of volunteers revealed the ghostly, but distinct, imprint of a grand burial ship visible in the regular latticework of rust-coloured lines staining the sandy soil. While the initial digs revealed that Sutton Hoo’s barrows had been largely plundered by 16th-century grave robbers, when work began on Mound One in the early summer of 1939 it led to a discovery comparable to that of the celebrated tomb of King Tutankhamun. During the 1930s, she invited Basil Brown, an excavation assistant at nearby Ipswich Museum, to undertake a series of archaeological investigations on the site.

For decades, the mysterious mounds that cover the area had inspired folkloric local legends, capturing the imagination of Sutton Hoo’s landowner and keen spiritualist Edith Pretty. Overlooking the quaint market town of Woodbridge, two hours northeast of London, the unassuming landscape of Sutton Hoo rises up from the banks of the picturesque River Deben which winds its way inland from its mouth at Felixstowe Ferry on the Suffolk coast.

As the storm clouds of the Second World War gathered ominously over Europe, in the peaceful, rolling countryside of Suffolk an amateur archaeologist unearthed the final resting place of an ancient warrior king, rewriting the story of English history. LARRY HORRICKS/NETFLIX © 2021 In a sleepy corner of Suffolk, one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time took placeĪ major new film from Netflix shines the spotlight on one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time – the discovery of the Anglo-Saxon burial ship at Sutton Hoo, known as “Britain’s Tutankhamun”. The film stars Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty, Ralph Fiennes as Basil Brown. The Dig is in select cinemas from 15 January, and available on Netflix from 29 January.

Download the dig film