Snape Ship Burial

Snape Ship Burial

The Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery is a place of burial dated to the 6th century CE located on Snape Common, near to the town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, Eastern England. Dating to the early part of the Anglo-Saxon Era of English history, it contains a variety of different forms of burial, with inhumation and cremation burials being found in roughly equal proportions. The site is also known for the inclusion of a high status ship burial. A number of these burials were included within burial mounds.

The first recorded excavation of the site was conducted by antiquarians in 1827, with a later, more thorough investigation taking place in 1862 under the control of landowner Septimus Davidson. Artefacts from the earliest excavations soon disappeared, although important finds uncovered from the 1862 excavation included a glass claw beaker and the Snape Ring, now housed in The British Museum, London.

During the 20th century, the heathland that the cemetery was on was given over to farmland, with a road and house being constructed atop the site. Today, the burial mounds themselves are not accessible to the public, although the artefacts uncovered by the excavation are on display at the Aldeburgh Moot Hall Museum in the nearby coastal town of Aldeburgh.