Gone Medieval - Ad Gefrin: Anglo-Saxon Palace

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Dr. Eleanor Janega is on a field trip to uncover the secrets of the Anglo-Saxon palace at Ad Gefrin, the summer residence of King Edwin of Northumbria. Joined on site by experts Chris Ferguson and Professor Sarah Semple, she explores recent archaeological discoveries that reveal grand halls, unique timber structures, and hints of mass Christian conversions. From the mysterious grandstand to the epic feasts hosted by kings and queens, these find buried deep in the ground paint a vivid picture of medieval power dynamics and the site's critical role in Northumbria's golden age.See the artefacts at the Ad Gefrin MuseumMore:How The North Turned ChristianThe Venerable BedeGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes to the crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here.

It's the 7th century. And in the rugged landscape of Northumbria, an Anglo-Saxon palace sits at the edge of a wind-swept hill. It's a place where kings, queens, and entourages from over the sea once gathered, where the threads of medieval politics and religion were brought together in early medieval majesty. This is Ad Geffrey, the royal palace of King Edwin of Northumbria. For centuries, its location was a mystery. The venerable Bede hints at mass conversions to Christianity here in his famous history of Britain, yet the palace itself eluded discovery.

That is until a 1949 aerial survey revealed mysterious crop marks north of Yevering, a small village northwest of Newcastle, setting in motion one of the most significant archaeological investigations of the 20th century. Since then, archaeologists have been peeling back the layers, uncovering a grand hall, a ceremonial grandstead, and traces of everyday life. Loomweights, fine gold jewelry. Each find tells a story of what made the northern reaches of Anglo-Saxon England tick. They shine a light not just on the world of nobles and bishops,

but on the lives of the hangers-on who supported and shaped this royal world. Over the next hour, we'll hear from the archaeologists digging into the ground at Yevering, and the museum team preserving the finds to open a window into this niche. mysterious Northumbrian world. First up is Chris Ferguson, director of visitor experience at the Ad Geffron Museum and Distillery. Located just outside Newcastle, the museum tells the untold story of this remarkable Anglo-Saxon Palace and the part it played in Northumbria's golden age. I met with Chris on the windswept hill where Ad Geffron once stood to try and understand

how a muddy field in the Northumbrian countryside was once so important to Anglo-Saxon history. Chris, I swear it doesn't matter how many times you bring me to this field, it still takes my breath away, which is a ridiculous thing to say about a field, but, you know, we're here on top of this gorgeous hill underneath the yivering bell, which is halfway to a mountain, sort of... Yeah, I'd say so. I mean, it's a good hike if you went up it. Yeah, I can see some 10-year-olds walking up it right now, better than me. And we're looking out over a series of these gorgeous shield hills off into the distance. I know the North Seas beyond them somewhere. But this does seem like the sort of place where if I was going to flex, say I'm a king in the 8th century,

in the 7th century, yeah, I'm hanging out here all summer. And that's what they were doing, right? Are you absolutely? And you've probably gone home by this point of the air because, you know, they're sat here in the howling gale and the wind. That's true. I think they probably left by this point as well, thinking this is all a bit cold and wind swept. But the rest of the summer, They're having a really glorious time in the sunshine, in north-northumberland, looking out over these, like, incredible views. We know, though, that this was a place that was inhabited well before they ever showed up. This is a pretty ancient site as sites in Britain, though.

Yeah, I mean, if you want to, you could do that sort of classic thing. Everywhere in Britain likes to say, oh, it's a deep archaeological landscape with activity stretching back. But this genuinely is. you've got activity here going right the way back to the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. This flat plain that we're looking at in front of us would have been a lake in prehistory. It was a glacial lake. There was a plug at the end that burst.

But what that means is by the time you get to the Anglo-Saxon period, it's a really agriculturally rich landscape. You've got all of those nutrients that are sat in that lake bed that they can use for growing crops, grazing cattle, all that stuff. And the river through the middle gives them the... gives them the access to get here and be on this site. And that's one of the big reasons why this is a particularly wealthy kingdom, right? Northumbria, it's the cattle, right? It's not their deal?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Your idea, this is, this is agriculturally rich in every sense. So you've got the uplands, you can graze your cattle on, you've got the lowlands you can bring them to in the summer. You've got all of your crop growing, your barley, your rye, your wheat, all of the things that can keep the kingdom and your animals fed through the summer. and ready access to the sea. You know, it feels like we're in the uplands with the cheviots behind us, but we are only probably a half-hour walk to the river and you're straight onto a boat

that takes you straight out to the North Sea. So you're in a deeply connected bit of landscape. Well, speaking of deeply connected bits of landscape and getting to the sea, that's what sort of makes this site famous, isn't it? It's because some people have come pretty famously, pretty far to visit this. You know, I've just come up from London for the day,

but we know for a fact, we think that people are coming from Rome, is that right? Yes. I mean, this is, this is, it's a royal palace site. This is a site where the kings and queens were in residence, and they'd bring people in assembly, and people would come vast distances for that, the summer palace. And we know from Beade's ecclesiastical history, some of the things that actually happened on this site.

So we have sort of the color and the characters and the knowledge of people. So like Bishop Paulinus, who comes from Rome, he's sent by the Pope with Augustine's mission into Canterbury. And he's part of that story of King Edwin and Queen Ethelbert and the first conversions. And they took place here and in the river below. And this is a place, it's not rural backwater Northumberland. It's deeply connected to all of Western Europe. Yeah, and I mean, to a certain extent, Paulinus shows up because there's a bit of a battle for what kind of Christianity we're going to have up here. I mean, it's not just the conversion of the people, which is fantastic.

But, you know, things were getting a little Irish Christian, you know, around the side. I think that, you know, Rome identifies this as a place where they're like, no, no, no, no, we're going to be the ones who are controlling this form of Christianity. And that tells us a lot about how rich and important this kingdom is, I think. Well, it absolutely is. And I think that's the fact that we're told about this site from B, that Paulinus is here. It's part of that conversion in the land. in the first phase of the conversions by the Roman church.

Of course, King Edwin is killed in battle by the Mercians afterwards. And when he's killed and Paulinus flees and Ethelbert flees, the kingdom reverts to paganism. It doesn't stick. It's then that Irish story. It's the story that follows of King Oswald and the foundation of Lindisfarne. That's yet to come. So this field, this place is witness to all of that moving picture and that story.

And so it's what's so magical when you come. here every time is you're standing in the footsteps of some of the most significant moments in British history in this field. In this field now, a lot of the times that I've been here, I've come and I've looked at the field and do not get me wrong. The vibes impeccable, the history off the charts. But we've come here because you've been digging for over a month now to have a look at some of the foundations of the buildings that were here. Can you tell me a little bit about what we got? Yeah, so for the last month, so this is a third season of a series of excavations by Durham University and the Geffron Trust and ourselves in the museum to

look at different parts of the earlier excavations of this site. So we know about this site from 1950s excavations by Brian Hope Taylor, who rediscovered this site. And that's how we understand that this is one of those most significant sites in British archaeological stories. And he found some of the major buildings, the great hall of Royal Royal residents, the grandstand, the enclosures, the service buildings. And what Sarah and the team have been leading excavation to look at this year is two of those structures to re-examine and reopen. For the first time in 70 years, the grandstand, that big theatre building, and also

the great enclosure, because they looked at that the last season two years ago, came back again to look much more fully at that because its story seems to stretch far deeper into history than the Anglo-Saxon story that we thought it was. You can you tell me a little bit about that because last time I came a couple of years ago, I was really struck by the fact that this is, you know, this is a complex. You know, you would use the term palace because you've got this big enclosure, you've got multiple outbuildings, there's the great hall where you have a big party. But also there's an amphitheater and that is interesting and not particularly what I would expect to be in most Anglo-Saction circumstances. No, the grandstand, the theatre, it's unique in Anglo-Saxon sites. No other Anglo-Saxon Royal Complex has a structure like that. A lot of them, you know, they all have great halls, they all have alignments with other buildings, but Yevering, Gephyrant is intentionally laid out in its alignment of buildings and has this great grandstand structure.

You're holding somewhere at its greatest extent in the region of 350, 370 people in there. And it's a raked building. For listeners to imagine how this looks. It's like a pie wedge in shape and plan on the ground. And it rises up. So like you're looking at a Roman amphitheatre or a modern stadium, it's a sort of take a slice out of that. Take a pizza slice pie wedge out of a stadium.

And it's that. And it's built entirely from timber. And it raises five, six metres into the air. And at its foot would have had a stage with a sound sort. screen around the back because again they're battling with the wind like we're sort of sat in the wind you feel the day they have to build a structure that deals with this prevailing wind a transit van to sit in for you no they have to build a timber structure it makes it completely unique because there's nothing else like that that's being found archaeologically and part of the

reason to go back and look at it is to see if it really is an anglo-saxon structure to test that to test our knowledge we know what we we know what we know we we don't know what we don't know One of the things when Brian Hope Taylor was excavating here in the 1950s is radiocarbon dating had just been invented, and it was very expensive. So he didn't use it. He did this entire sequencing in inference, biochological inference. So a large part of this is going back and getting modern scientific dating from in situ samples to test its chronology. Yeah. See that it's true.

And see that that grandstand is truly in Anglo-Saxon structure. Okay, so this makes sense to me. When we look at it, here's this pit. and we have excavated now back to the... Is this the eighth row? What is this? Yeah, we're in the seventh-eighth, ninth row. Wow, okay.

So, you know, we can really see where this is set up and you can really see this curved fan shape. And I suppose for me as a historian, right, because the difference between a historian and an archaeologist is archaeologists are doing the Lord's work, sitting in the field and digging things up. Fantastic. You know, historians like myself, we will steal that work, thank you very much.

but we are also waiting for someone to write something down like B did talking about the conversion that happens here. And then you sort of put those things together and you try to interpret what was going on. And I guess from my standpoint, when I see the theater, I'm saying, okay, well, there are two ways that I can think about this. One way is the Anglo-Saxons here are seeing this connection to Rome. You know, here we've got Paulinus. They're trying to say we are a center of power and we understand that one of the ways that power happens is through this connection to Rome. You have grand monumental works. You build theaters.

You have palaces. And I could understand why that would happen. Now, it would be pretty interesting. I don't know of any other Anglo-Saxons who are going around doing that. However, this is a really rich and important place. So maybe that happens. But I could also very easily understand this as a Romano-British site where we've got some Romans who posted it up, said, wow, nice field that these guys have been hanging out in every summer. You know what we like to do in the summer? We like to put on plays, let's build a theater.

Yeah. And I think that, and that's the great question with this is, if it is Romano-British, it would be very unique because there's nothing else. Roman particularly, you've got a lot of Iron Age activity in this area, but we're north of Hadrian's wall, we're not in an area of settled Roman towns and encampments the same way. You've got the forts and the fortlets and the marching camps, but you don't have the great towns, Vindalanda being the nearest one, you don't have York. But if I'm here as an Anglo-Saxon king, queen, and I've got my timber world that I've built here, I'm also operating my kingdom of Northumbia at Bamberra, where I'm inside an Iron Age obadi. I'm at Catterick, where I'm inside a Roman town,

and I'm at York, where I'm inside a Roman legionary town. Yeah. And what they've probably got, they may be using at York and Catterick, are the remains of the Roman stone amphitheaters? Ah. So you could have a world where something about Northumbrian kingship requires them to have this sort of structure.

Yeah. Because they're using the surviving Roman structures in York and Catterick, and they need to then build a timber version for whatever it is that they're doing with it. But it does then still operate completely separately to what they're doing as far as we know in Kent or East Anglia or something like that. So it either says something significantly profound

about Northumbrian power relationships and how they are operating and managing their sights, their kingdoms, their law, their justice, or tells us something completely profound about what's happening in the Iron Age and the Romano Iron Age up here. So either way, it's a nationally significant structure. But if you have to interpret it one way or the other,

it just becomes more interesting, more exciting, and more perplexing. It tells us something profound about Northaminkmanship or tells us something profound about the Romano-British Iron Age. Oh, exactly. Because, I mean, if it's Romano British, whoa, they're building theaters up here, north of Hadrian's wall, whoa. But they're also choosing to do it then out of timber. I mean, why are they doing it out of timber?

Why are they suddenly gone off and? fell a whole load of trees to build that when they're building everything else around here in marching camps out of stone. All of these things just become slightly weirder questions. So we'll only know the answer to this when we've got the scientific dating to be able to know. That's the reason to come back for the fourth visit. Thank you very much. I will. But, okay, so here we go. In the theatre and then the theatre is kind of behind where we know probably the Royal Chambers are. And that's behind probably where the Great Hall is. and these are all lined out.

And over here we've got this other big pit. And we're taking a look at, and what have we got going on over here? Because this is a huge pit that you've dug. So one of the great questions that Sarah and the team wanted to look out from this from two years ago was when Brian Hope Taylor excavated and published the site, the Great Hole backed into this great enclosure, this palisaded great enclosure.

and as archaeologists and historians, I think any of us looked at it and went, I'm actually thinking about the reconstruction Hope Taylor did, that's uncomfortably close. You're coming out of the end of your great hall, where you've got your great entrance door, to be faced immediately with a massively tall palisade wall. It feels a little odd. So it was one of the first questions that Sarah and team wanted to ask.

So that two years ago went in just next to the Great Hall and excavated part of the outer. ditch of that great enclosure and found that there was Anglo-Saxon features running on top of the fill of the ditch. Okay. So there was fenced enclosures that went on top of this. And that was fences were sort of part of the enclosure of the Great Hall. And they did radocarbone dating and optical luminescence dating of that ditch and got

iron age dating material out of the bottom of that dish. So this year has been looking both at the innermost ditch further up in areas of Brian Hupp, Taylor did not excavate. Right. And at the terminal ends of that, so, and when we say terminal ends, what we mean is, if you imagine an enclosure, it's a vast enclosure, it's probably about 10 tennis courts in size to give people a sense of scale on the inside space that's enclosed. And you've got two pairs of ditches that are recut repeatedly.

They would have had a timber palisade built on top of it. Okay. And at the end, what we call the terminal ends, Hope Taylor, interpreted a loop so that these palisades joined from the outermost and the innermost would loop around in a great loop and join back up. And so this excavation has been looked at one of those terminal ends to see what's happening with that. And what we found from that is that Hope Taylor had only exhibited part of it, very slightly,

in his final season here. Right. So he'd done it in a rush at the end. Which is fair enough. me, had an incredibly complicated Anglosaxon Palace to understand. And so Sarah has sort of been really re-examining what he'd done and exfitting new areas to see what this is, especially having had Iron Age dating material from the other bit that they'd looked at in the previous seasons, to see if this is truly an earlier feature then, something in a much greater time depth to it,

so it's an Iron Age complex that lies before the Anglesaxon Palace. I mean, I guess either way, this tells us a really. important story about how kingship works in the Anglo-Saxon period because fundamentally, you know, as you say, we've got, we have evidence that people have been here basically since year dot, you know, as soon as people showed up in Britain, they're like, oh yeah, I'm having that. Thank you very much. And so it also makes sense in the way that we understand kingship and rulership to work in the

medieval period because what you do to prove that you are a king is that you understand how kings operate and you go to the places where kings are in order to do your things. So even if, you know, there is no longer a Romano amphitheater. Let's say that we're going to go with that hypothesis. But you know that there was one there, right? Well, yes. You know, and they built it here probably because they're like, well, this is where there is a big old kind of palace and you're going to want to always be connected to that. So we can see this connection through time and we can see people associating this place with wealth, with prestige, where in order to be someone who is anyone in Northumbria, you need to be doing it at this site. Yes. I mean, this is it. You've got

that association of power structures that goes deeply back. So we know, and you see it in Anglesax and Burials, you see it in other Anglesax Passes where they will appropriate Gronsage barrow structures in the landscape, Roman sites in the landscape, Einishe's landscape, because they're seen as powerful places. And if you're wanting to establish your control and your power over that area, that territory, those people, being there is the place that legitimizes your rule, much like inventing your genealogy to include Anguson Horser and Caesar and Arthur and Woden and all of these mythological characters.

It's the same thing in the landscape. So what you've definitely got here is wherein the shadow, as he said, of Yevring Bell. And Yevring Bell, it has an Iron Age opadere enclosure on the top of it. So you've got a deep Iron Age landscape behind, and they know that. And they're occupying this place in relation to that. And indeed, Ad Geffron is a name for this place isn't an Old English place name. It's a Britonic Celtic place name. So Yefferin, the ad is Latin, means bas.

the yeffron is the name of the hill. It's the hill of the goats. So the place name is by the hill of the goats. Ah. And so what you're doing is deliberately organizing your placement because of that landscape feature and appropriating it to show your power structure and place in the landscape.

This makes perfect sense to me. We see the church do this all the time, you know, when they're coming to England as well. You know, they'll say, oh, where's your religious site? Do you have a particular spring? you're worshipping at, do you have temples of any kind? Because guess what? There's a church there now. And so, of course, you do exactly the same thing with rulership. Well, exactly. And then actually, that bit of here of this site with that conversion and that rulership, you know, we're sat on a site

behind us is where the evidence for a pagan shrine, a pagan temple probably was. Wow. In the course in the quarrying. In front of us to our left is where the River Glen is. That's the site, 36 days, where Paulinus was baptizing and catechising. We were told by B that this is that place. And then in front of us, around this great enclosure is the evidence for the first church on the site. So we have a church building. We have Christian burials. We also have pagan. We also have the river where it's happening. So everything's happening here at the start of that sort of merging of Christianity with power structures in the Anglo-Saxon world in the north. I guess that makes sense because, well, A, you need to go ahead and get right to the top. That's

the number one thing you want to do with conversion is you go to the king, you go to the quaid. Yeah, you know, well, usually actually the queen's already done. It's right. It's about the woman. She's already Christian, you know, and, you know, and you know how wives are. Yeah. Am I right? Am I right? Yeah.

She's taking you there. Yeah. And she's the one that's bringing the story here. She's the, you know, for our Christian story here, Queen Ethelberg, massively significant. I mean, for me, she is one of the most important figures in seventh century England because she's bringing, she's marrying King Edwin. She's bringing Edwin to the throne here. she's bringing Paulinus with her when she comes to those conversions.

She's overseeing all of that conversion. And then at the point that Paulinus and, well, at the point that Edwin loses his kingdom, Paulinus and Ethel Bearer Flea, and then she goes back down to Kent and found a monastery and she's there sponsoring Christianity running this massive monastery for the next 30 years. She is right at the heart of this. It just goes to show you how much power women really did wield at the time. People like to use the term of soft power. I'm sorry, that's just power.

No, it's just power. That's just power. Being able to say, guess what, everybody, you're a different religion now? Come on. And I think that's what's important of understanding a site like this, and the operation of a great hall is, especially inside that hall, it's much royal power of a woman of the queen that matters as the king. She's orchestrating where everybody is.

She knows everybody in that room. She's giving out the first cup. She's orchestrating how the feast goes. it's her kingdom as much as it is the kings I'll tell you what you want to go to that feast and I mean I want to go to that feast I'm not getting in the doors unless you got baptized so it's like down to the river for you first thing

exactly get your baptism and then you can come party exactly that exactly that I mean well gosh here we still are you know hundreds of years later hanging out in this field they've got me you know it's like she's done it you know she's done it again you know and I think it's that it's that understanding

of this site and what makes it so special is that sense of the power structures and the layout and the space and you still feel it now when you stand in the footprint of where the Great Hall was and you look towards Grandstand

or towards Great Enclosure you can sense that its performance and it's deliberate and it's intentional and your approach to the king and the queen and the Royal Court is imbued it

has all of that power with it you have to be invited into that Great Hall you have to have done your conversion You have to have done that. And then you have to be invited beyond the Great Hall to their royal residence, to a sort of an inner audience with them. It's a very deliberate, the organised space for that.

I'll tell you what, if it is as impressive as it is when I'm looking at a ditch in a field in the 21st century, imagine how incredible it would have been for someone in the 7th century, you know? Well, and the thing is you've got to imagine as well is, When they're here in court, seasonal, summer palace, they're here for two to three months of the year. They're not just in these buildings. People are coming to be around this space. So the majority of people who are here when the court is in attendance are probably camping in tents around it.

So it's not just a field with a great hall and the spaces in. This has got thousands of people around it in a summer. It's like being at sort of the Anglosaxon equivalent of Glastonbury, with the king and the queen in the middle of it. Yes. You know, it's got that feeling about it. It'll have had that energy about it. And it's going to be an intensely, densely populated space.

But this is something that you guys are still doing now, right? Like, you have the Archaeology Fest this year. You were setting up tense. You're having people really kind of look into how people might have been living at the site then as well. Yeah. So, yeah, we organized with the Geffen Trust, with the University, the Festival of Archaeology celebrations. We did a whole weekend with reenactors camping. We did looking at, obviously,

objects from the museum, looking at how we do this sort of archaeology for people. And it was really special because we were studying the footprint of these great halls of these buildings with the reenactors in costume. They were reading excerpts of Beowulf. You know, it's a really special. There's something just excitingly cool about that. You know, you might be the first person to hear Beowulf performed in that space in that hall in 1400 years. That's just cool. That is, I mean, look, you don't have to tell me twice, right? This is what is so exciting. And I think what is is so great about being able to bring together the field of experiential archaeology and the people who are really doing reenacting who are seeing how these spaces would have worked with the actual

archaeology, with actually just getting down there and digging the pit. Well, this is it because it is also, you know, it's an interesting archaeology now when you've got a hole in the ground and you're looking at it and that's exciting. We're learning new. Most of the year, this is a field. So for us, it's why we have the museum and why have the objects there, but also why we do those festivals and reenactments, is reenactors allow us to see the colour and to imagine more broadly what this world would have looked and felt like and sounded like. And that's as important as understanding, you know, the building alignment and what was in the ground. It's how did it look and feel? What did somebody in that space do in the past? It's similar to what I do today.

As Chris Ferguson has just explained, the discoveries made at Yevering Bell in the 1950s by Brian Hope Taylor revealed a complex royal site unlike any other in the British Isles. But there's still so much we don't know. That's why archaeologists returned this summer to Ad Geffron, digging deeper into its mysteries. I spoke next with Professor Sarah Semple from Durham University, who's leading a new phase of excavations at the site, about Ad Geffron's vast timber halls, its mysterious grandstand, and potential traces of burning that may mark the site's dramatic end. Ah, Sarah, our intrepid archaeologist. It's so exciting to see you.

Yeah, this is incredibly exciting. So I have been here before with you, and we've talked a little bit about the specifics of the site. Can you tell me how we came to find it in the first place at all? Yeah, so, you know, this is a site that has so many firsts. So it was one of the early sites recorded by air photography just after the war, and that showed a whole series of crop marks that people thought initially were maybe monastic site, maybe Roman.

But it's Brian Hope Taylor, really, in the very early 50s who put together the words of beat, writing the 8th century, about a big royal entourage and palace and meeting up at the Evering with the crop marks and began excavations here and discovered this seminal early medieval palace complex.

And it's huge, isn't it? I mean... It is. You know, every year that we dig here We're always taken back by the scale of the archaeology. You can look at it in plan, but when you're actually excavating, you really get a feel for just how enormous the investment was, in terms of halls and in terms of the layout of the site.

You've been digging here for years now, haven't you? Well, we started here a while back with geophysics and sort of looking at remote sensing, aerial photography, you know, doing the usual sort of background work, and then we started in 2021, and we've worked on three seasons since then. Wow, okay. So this year, I'm really excited because you're working on my favorite part, which is you were excavating it more particularly kind of around the edges of things. You know, we knew where the Great Hall was because of, well, Hope Taylor's work and your earlier work.

What are we digging up this summer? So just to think a little bit about the past seasons, you know, we're interested in the periphery of the site, as you say. We're interested in adding to the story. And we're also interested in the time depth as well. So putting our context around the early medieval activity. But this year we have extended our work around the Great Enclosure. But incredibly excitingly, we're also looking at the theatre or the grandstands. So this really unique, enigmatic structure that Yevring's so well-known for.

And you've been doing a lot of work on that very specifically. I could see. I mean, it looks like you can actually see the different structures of the standards. itself here, like where the rows would have been? Absolutely. So, you know, as far as we knew from the publications, I hope Taylor had excavated the entire set of foundation trenches for the structure. But in the archival material we looked at, we had hunched that we could see snow-covered areas that were in situ deposits.

That's unexcavated material. So we came back and we've been really fortunate. We've located those areas and we've been able to excavate previously untested at parts of the complex and actually see some of the original sort of backfill and material in those foundation trenches for the ground stunt. What I can see here is the sort of curved rows and that would be where people were sitting and it seems like there's there are piles of maybe rocks or something that what would that have been doing? Yeah, so there are essentially nine foundation trenches and they go for a small one at the front, increase in size, stage back. The idea being that holding

big upright timbers supporting seating, so elevated seating. So it's a bit like a wedge rather than an amphitheatre, but something that would have supported people sitting and watching a performance. In the excavation and looking at the Institute material,

you know, we have really interesting kind of collapses of gravel and stone within there, and we can tell that that's from where the timbers have been pulled out. So we're looking at the, you know, the sharp-sided foundation trenches for these big timber supports. And then actually those timbers being

removed, all of the gravel claxing in. We can see that those have been left open for a while as well. Any idea why we would have been pulling the timber out? I think it's really interesting. We know that timber's important. It gets reused a lot. You know, we find that in the medieval period as well. But, you know, I'm really interested in how little additional material is in those fills. And it does make me wonder just how short-lived this structure is. And actually it's built as a relatively short life and it's pulled down. You know, this is the trouble with archaeology. You find all these cool things.

It's so enigmatic, and then we're just left with the mystery at the end. We've got some lovely deposits in it where they're quite charcoal, rich, lots of tiny flecking. We know that Hope Taylor argued there were two sort of big burning episodes on the site, and that that may have led to the site being abandoned completely as a palace complex. So I'm interested if those trenches are open, and we get this kind of collation of Wimbledon charcoal, whether we are looking, we might in that section have that sort of end point for the settlement. Okay, so, I mean, one of these things that happens, though, is that things do burn down,

especially, you know, you got a wooden grate hall that can burn down. You know, so I guess, yeah, the charcoal blowing in there, that would make sense. But also, I mean, things burn down all the time. Would you really necessarily leave just because of, like, one big fire and you get rid of like your entire like summer party house? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's fascinating.

So I think the traditional argument is that those burning episodes are big raids. And we've got some interesting additional archaeology that we've executed, but Hope Taylor did, which are string burials and indications that there may be a major, you know, disaster on the site of some kind or a big conflagration or a raid. Hence the site might be abandoned and, you know, the center of power moves to millfield. But a lot of that's just conjecture. What we can see in our excavations is indications both from previous season, this one, that there are episodes of burning.

Some of those are ever our prehistoric in date, not early medieval. I see. I mean, how many people have you had working out here? We're here in the final day of the dig because I like to show up and see everything. It's a high pressure. Yeah, you know, no big deal. I want to see the goods. How many people were digging these holes all over?

We generally dig a relatively small team. We've had, I think, 14 people here this year. We have our students from Durham University. The sites managed by the Geffron Trust, they're in partnership with the Geffron Trust. And we have, you know, a team of supervisors come back year after year, which is brilliant. So people who have come and dug here have stayed because it's a really, you know, it's a really evocative place to work. And it's such a, you know, a site full of interests and sort of stories. So people do want to come back.

Oh, you know, myself included. Sarah, thank you so much for making time for me today. This is just an absolute pleasure. No, it's absolutely great, and it delights me every time people are interested in this site. However, the story doesn't stop in the soil. After spending the morning on that wind-swept field with Chris and Sarah, I took the short drive down to the Ad Geffern Museum in Wooler. It's a bright and beautiful space that brings the story of the royal site to life.

Among the displays, you can see the treasures unearthed from the excavations at Yevering Bell, but also Anglo-Saxon finds from across the northeast. Jewelry, glasswork, and tools that help us imagine what it was like to live and work in the early medieval world. To explore what these objects reveal, I sat down with Paula Constantine, who helps care for this remarkable collection. Well, I've taken this short drive from the field below Yevring Bell to the beautiful museum to see what has been found in the field. So we're leaving behind the intrepid archaeologist to continue being windswept. But I am here with Paula. You're actually going to tell me about the wonderful things you have in the museum that you found in the field.

Well, the archaeology in the field is not fast because. of the preservation on the site and also how we think certainly the Saxons wound up the site at the end of its life. But we do have some absolutely amazing things in our museum. We like to say we are small but perfectly formed. You do have a beautiful collection here. What are some of your favourite things? My ultimate favourite is the small cabinet with the weaving and women's things in it. Women's things. Yes. I love that. It is really small, but it's really important. I think with the textiles in particular, we've got some gorgeous gold, we've got jewelry, we've got hanging bowls.

But this is something that every single person has a relationship with. Every single person had fabric, wore clothes and would have had some form of relationship with this. In fact, fine cloth is... the work of the higher status women. So it's not just lower status women. It is everybody. And in fact, the likes of spindle worlds are ubiquitous in any early medieval site across the country. Although we don't have a spindle well in there. We've got some spectacular loom weights. They do just look like stone donut. And it does get commented on just about by anyone. But it is the production of fabric. and that is a daily task year in, year out for people of the early medieval period.

I think that's such an important point because when we think about something like a summer palace, and we're thinking about people just hanging out, having big feasts, but this is the medieval period. Work still needs to happen all the time. So, yeah, you have your loom set up as well. We've got, yeah, the workshops, and there's workshops there that very clearly show us that loom weights are being produced on site. The loomweights that we've got upstairs are from a little site very close to at Geffron, where we have another sunken featured building there and quite a number of these loomweights. So it would be nice to think that that particular village was providing textiles for the royal party when they were in residence. Who knows? But also you've got these

great needles here. And one of the things that really strikes me about them is that they're much larger than their modern equivalence, a lot longer than a needle that I would use now? They are, and they're very square-headed. I don't know whether the interpretation bothers me. It's not something I've used, but we would think that that sort of shape would tear a fabric going through it. And I would suggest the possibility of them having other uses as well, and not just needle. the little pin beside them. Considering we're looking at a time period where we don't have zips,

we don't have buttons or toggles, the idea of pinning any form of your clothing together with a pin is something that everybody would have been familiar with. So you'd have had all sorts of pins in different sizes from different materials for different purposes. And again, this one I like the fact that we don't really know what it's for. It's small and it's bent. It's obviously been very well used and it is just a very human thing to have.

You've hit on something that I think is really exciting about the work that's happening at the museum here because you just said you're not sure about what the uses of these are because you haven't used them because you've used a lot of the things. How do you used a lot of the things that you found here? Can you tell me a little bit about the experiential side of the archaeology? There's an awful lot of things that you can see in cabinets and that you can look at in books. that people don't use today. We don't know how they're used. And I like to make artefacts and reuse them. There's a lot of people out there who do that.

So it gives you the experience of walking in their shoes, how to do something, whether it's something that's not straightforward when you're looking at a wear pattern on a tool. Has it been used by even somebody that's right-handed or left-handed can be, you know, something that is valuable knowledge. For instance, a lot of people wouldn't know that a quill pen is right-handed or left-handed. And it is probably the same with needles.

We know that spinning relies on people being right-handed or left-handed for the plying. And we like to have a left-hander in every group of spinners so that they can naturally ply your wolf. Oh, that's so great. One of the things that is really special about the museum is here we have all of these great artifacts that had been found. But you also have the recreation of the great hall, which is just so incredible. But for me, the thing that's really exciting is how you and the team have actually spent time using the materials to make all of the hangings, to make the pillows. And A, they're beautiful. That's really great. But I remember having a conversation with you early on where you were saying, and now we know how long it takes to make these things. And that's just incredible because the man hours that go into decorating a great hall, that's something that just gets lost. So it's mostly the Ackley Reenactment Society. It's Wendy and Stewart who oversaw the production of the wall hangings that we've got there.

just say we have three behind the thrones that are based on a stone cross in Cumbria. We have four on our side walls that are based on the Book of Duro and the Gospels. And then we have two pagan ones based on images from the Sutton Who helmet. And from conception to sourcing all the materials, getting the colours right, and sitting down and doing the stitching, it took them the best part of two years to produce those. time is something that we don't always consider when we're looking at artifacts, but time is something that really needs to be experienced in an early medieval way. But that really tells us a story about opulence.

It really tells us a story about how wealthy this place was. Because if you have the amount of time that it can take people to just make you know, really nice wall hangings and they're still going to be looked after they're going to be fed. That tells us that you're in a really prosperous place and a really well-off society. Absolutely, because you'll have somebody else that can take care of the mundanities for you. So you're going to have somebody that's going to fetch your wooden and cook your food and sort out your bedding and any transportation and your animals. And you certainly as a higher status person will be able to sit there with your

ladies and a group of ladies and a guy in the came and do your do your work and shawl that off. It is an incredibly visual society in the early medieval and from the instant somebody sees you, they need to know where you stand in that society. That's a really interesting point. We see all these things in the finds that you have from the site, you know, it looks like we've got some really cool knives. I really appreciate that there's the knives themselves, but also these remade ones so that you can know what that looks like. But also some pretty cool belt buckles. All right. Like, come on. I love that because that hasn't changed a whole lot over the centuries. We're still buckling belts in the same old way. Absolutely. If it isn't broke, you don't fix it. We've got some design changes over time. Very little. It's more the pattern than the actual way that the thing works. So you will recognize that you will recognize that you will. recognize a belt buckle from the early medieval as being virtually identical to one that you

will use today. The only difference there is that they're probably used in different ways. You will not now hold your socks up with a small strap and belt buckle, whereas they would do then. I mean, obviously, elastic doesn't exist for them. To be fair, we were holding socks up that way for quite some time. Absolutely. Yes. The Victorian's still doing the same thing, you know. of it. Okay, one of the other things that I think is really special that you've got here is you found a cast of a Frankish coin. And this to me is so interesting. You know, obviously the coin is gone now, RIP to the coin. But what we can tell about this is we've got a society well enough connected up here in Northumbria that they've got coins from down. on the continent. And that just says so much to me. Well, we are quite a rural county now. But from Bede and from later writings, we know that the royal parties and people who are traveling are still using Roman roads. The Roman trade networks are still open and still running, despite the fact

that Romans themselves are long gone by this period. There is a hint with the Sutton Who, Zanthine bucket that maybe older sons are going off onto the continent to learn how things are done. And we've certainly got that connection here. So we've got the Roman Road. We've got the harbour at Bamborough and the sea is a superhighway at this point in time. The sea and the rivers network. You can actually navigate a boat to get up to Mailman where the next palace was built after Ad Geffen was abandoned. And that's only about a mile away from where our Geferon is today. So you have the potential for any continental sea trade and the results of that to get to within a mile of Ad Geffen itself. So just because the king is travelling does not mean he won't

have his court and his comforts and the trade and ambassadors coming to see him where he is. We know that Edwin's queen comes from Kent and Kent is extremely well connected on the continent. They bring Paulinus, Polinus being a Roman Catholic bishop. And having the backing and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church is really, really important and continues to be important in early medieval, Northumbria. We have very great connections between the joint monasteries among Weermouth and Jarrell, constantly sending gifts to the Pope. So there is transport and travel right throughout France,

into Spain and certainly down to Italy and to Rome constantly. I think this is such an important point because it's so easy for people to think that the early medieval world in particular is cut off, that these are all these tiny places and all you need to do is come to a place like this. Hear the stories about how there are people from Rome who are here, see that there are coins from France that are here. And it really makes you understand that this. is still in the midst of a world that is thriving.

Absolutely. Thriving and expanding and certainly based on trade. Because what, and so what are we trading up here? So we've got all of these wonderful cloths, for example, textiles. Do you think that is something that's going to be getting sent? So Northumbry has a reputation for having very good, specifically woolen textiles. we know in Rome from the area around Hadrian's wall that the cloaks were worth more than gold

when they were exported to Rome during the Roman period so the knowledge is here for creating exceptionally good and waterproof textiles and after you've spent time on the field this morning you'll know that that's quite an important thing for us here in the north Look, so we develop breed of sheep and we have the cheviate sheep that provides wool that is very good for this sort of fabric for being waterproof, windproof. And it's probably something that would be exported. It certainly is exported slightly later on and we see the monasteries sending vast quantities of woolen cloth abroad for an income up here.

And there's lead from the North Pennines, which is still at that point, part of Northumbria, a very important commodity at the time. Yeah, I mean, to be trading anything, though, is really showing what is important about this area, though. You know, these are people who not only have enough money and time to be creating luxury goods, they have enough of them that they can trade them. Absolutely. And we will, I suppose, one of the other things that we are at, exporting is religion and the foundation of monastic houses throughout Northumbria and then

the synod of after the Synod of Whitby, the creation of the Catholic state, which takes over the whole country. That's a really good point. Yeah. I mean, because we do think about these things. All you need to do is say, you know, Northumbria to people and they're going to be thinking of the Holy Island. They'll be thinking of Lindisfarne. But we do have the this tendency to kind of think of that as a Viking age? Well, wait, but it's like, no, the point is the Vikings burnt it down, you know, who built it in the first place. Yeah. And, you know, the influence starts off as being a Celtic church, very much Irish and influenced. And then after Oswey and the Synod of Whitby, we get

that Catholic influence. And again, it's that trade. It's that Rome belongs to us now. And And Rome history is our history, and we're part of something so much bigger. So way back in the early 600s into the 700s, we feel like we are part of something much bigger, part of European back then. I think it's great. You've got all these wonderful things actually from the site, you know, and thanks to the Gaffirn Trust for making this possible. But you got some other pretty little treasure. here? Can we talk about this glass beaker? Yeah, we have this absolutely amazing, intact claw beaker on loan from the British Museum and it's come back north for the first time in a long time. And it's a

peculiar thing. We have the replica there and I think you've had that in your hands and you can feel it's not an easy thing to pick up. Yeah. So this is, let's say it's about a foot high altogether. It's of this beautiful blue glass and it's got, I don't know, they almost look like octopus arms or something that comes out that folds with a bit of a leg at the end that joins back onto the glass. It's just a phenomenal object. It is a phenomenal object. It is made out of recycled Roman glass and we think it was put together in Germany and brought over here. It was specifically, found in Castle Eden in County Durham. And like I said to you before, it is intact. If we were in a position to be able to put liquids in it today, it would still hold liquid. And it is quite a fragile

item that extremely high status. When you set the table for dinner in the Anglo-Saxon world, you do not give everybody a glass. This is something that would be on the high table. It would be very special. It would be a showpiece. I mean, it would be a showpiece now. Absolutely. It's a sense of a vase. Like, I'm just thinking, you know, what am I going to drink out of this wine? But this is part of the ritual of the whole and the idea that everybody will drink from one cup. And once it's full, it's difficult to put it down. Often Anglo-Saxon glassware that hasn't been pinched from the room and kept intact. But stuff that's been made during the Anglo-Saxon period

tends to have really, really narrow bases as if they're echoing the form of a drinking horn. So it's not easy to put it down. It's something to be passed, something to be shared. It's part of that ritual of being in the hall and really forming a war band, forming your cabinet, forming your followers

and making them into people who will be loyal to you and loyalty and pledges in the hall is a very important part of the proceedings. I mean, I think that it's such an incredible piece, and it's lovely to see it in the context of the great hall. You know, so being able to picture how these people might have been setting their tables is really important, you know. Then also, come on, what's going on with this cross over here, this gorgeous gold cross? a gold cross, the old cross. Now that is on loan from Berwick Museum. And it's really small. We do get people coming in thinking it's going to be an awful lot bigger.

This thing's only about two and a half, maybe three centimetres long, made out of gold. It was found by metal detectorists in 2019. And much like mudlarking might be at London, it was found on the banks of the River Tweed. and I mean good luck that they found it. I mean, it is such a tiny thing. It's a cross and it looks upside down. It's got the shorter end at the bottom rather than at the top. But if you're wearing that as a necklace

and you pick it up at the bottom to kiss it for devotions, it is the right way up. It's not as if they're all being Satanists at those point in ties with the reverse crucifesif. I feel like that's not what was happening. Not at all. Now the other thing is it has three little inscribed equal-armed crosses on the arms. And we know that if there is a name with an equal-armed cross after it,

it denotes some sort of religious person. So a bishop possibly or somebody with religious office. And you would expect from having something gold that they're high. up in the church rather than lower down. And it has a runic inscription on it. There are two lots of conjoint ruins in it. And the conjoint ruins denote some sort of mysticism or magic on their own. And this name has two sets on it.

And it's said to say either eardruff, which is a name that is not known anywhere, or eardwolf. And Eard Wolf is known to be the last bishop of Lindisfarne. He's the man that took Cuthbert's final remains away when the Vikings were attacking Lindisfarne. So Eard Wolf, it said, takes Cuthbert by boat up the tweed to Norham a little bit further up. Now, this may be a leap of faith, but it would be lovely to think that this was one of his personal possessions. And you know, it also would explain how you go around losing. something as valuable as a gold cross at the time in the kerfuffle of trying to get St. Cuthbert out of there.

Well, absolutely. And that cross itself has had a bit of a hard life because you can see if you look at the top part of the cross that it's had a break in it. It had an original holder or a hanging that's come off and there's a little nick at the top. And it's been redrilled and the drilling goes through the ruin. So it's obviously been precious enough to somebody's, broken before and been precious enough to be reused again Anglo-Saxon recycling. Well, look, it's a lucky dip, and I'm choosing to believe this is this Air Walls Cross.

That's what I'm going with it. Why not? That's our prerogative, I think. Look, this is such a special collection and such a great museum to help people really understand how people would have been living at this point in time. I think that one of the things is that the museum healer in Wooler does really well is it provides the context that ordinary people wouldn't have to be able to understand what this world would look like, what it would sound like, and how you would use these particular objects in context. So you're doing this incredible job bringing the past back to life. Well, we'd like to think so. Yeah, it's not just all about the kings and the bishops. It's about their support network and the people that

make what they do possible. Yeah, I couldn't agree more you are a woman after my own heart. Well, lovely to me, you and lovely that you could come up here. Speaking with Paula, you really feel the human side of Ad Geffron. The weavers, the craft workers,

the travelers and traders who sustained this royal court. Every object points to how Anglo-Saxon Northumbria was a community defined by its connections and creativity. This was no dark age, and Ad Gaffron no mere isolated frontier. It was a part of a vast, vibrant world linked by trade and religion, and immersed in a shared culture with the rest of early medieval Britain and beyond. It's easy to imagine the palace of King Edwin as a distant, shadowy memory, especially now when all that remains is a farmer's field like any other.

But as we've heard today, excavations by Durham University and the Ad Geffron Trust continue to reveal the scale and sophistication of the site. While the museum, just a few miles away, ensures that these discoveries are accessible, bringing history to life for thousands of visitors a year. Thank you to Chris, Sarah, and Paula for coming on Gone Medieval and for inviting me up north to see for myself the groundbreaking finds they are uncovering. You can explore more on this world by visiting the Ad Gefer and from Museum in Wooler. It's got a whiskey distillery too. Go on. You know you want to.

And of course, thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at HistoryHit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts. Until all your friends and family, that you've gone medieval. Until next time.