It is a cool summer’s morning around the year 625 in the East Anglian Kingdom in Britain,
and today is a remarkable day, a day for wearing one’s best clothing.
In the years following the end of Roman occupation, Germanic-speaking people from the Northern
borders of the Roman empire had settled in the area.
The Anglo-Saxons were a sophisticated, but pre-literate society dominated by oral traditions.
The epic poem Beowulf has its origins in that pre-Christian time, but it was not until centuries
later that it was written down.
We have only fragmentary information on the Anglo-Saxon way of dress, and that is primarily
through archaeology and their burial traditions.
Their wealthy elite could afford imported textiles, but most people’s clothes were
made from home-spun, and home-woven, linen and wool.
Their shoes were leather and fastened with toggles or straps.
Little evidence for women’s leg coverings survives, and it is assumed that their gowns
were long.
Many metal objects, such as brooches, survive burial, and the fabrics close to them are
often mineralised and preserved.
The position of brooches, pins and buckles can indicate the style of garment, and how
it was worn and fastened.
The textiles captured beneath the metal reveal the layers of linen and wool, the type of
weaves and any decorative trim used.
A purse made from a ring of ivory, and cloth or leather, was hung from the woman’s tablet-woven
belt, along with a stylised key, which perhaps indicated her status as someone who ran a
household.
Strings of glass, precious stones and amber beads were popular, their random nature suggesting
that the beads were accrued over time and that each one may have been meaningful to
its owner.
Fashions were regional and changed over time from the early peplos-style gown to long-sleeved
gowns worn with open coats or cloaks and edged with tablet-woven braid.
Long and sometimes colourful veils were also a mark of status; these were held in place
by a band worn around the head, either beneath or over the veil, and pins were used to keep
it in place.
But Christianity was nudging at this pagan society, and its adoption would soon be expressed
in clothing, bringing about a plainness of women’s dress and a style of veiling which
covered the hair and neck.
It would also bring an end to furnished burial customs.
But on this summer’s day, in East Anglia, their world was still predominantly pagan.
This community was marking the death of their warrior Lord, burying him in his ship high
upon a hill above the river Deben, with all the goods which represented his wealth and
power in life, and with which he could enter the feasting halls of the gods with pride.
We must hurry now to take our last look at the king and launch him, lord and lavisher
of rings, on the funeral road.
And they buried his treasure in the barrow and let the ground keep that ancestral trove,
gold under gravel, gone to earth.
Then twelve warriors rode around the tomb, chieftains' sons, champions in battle, all
of them distraught, chanting in dirges, mourning his loss as a man and a king.
They extolled his heroic nature and exploits and gave thanks for his greatness; which was
the proper thing, for a man should praise a prince whom he holds dear and cherish his
memory when that moment comes when he has to be convoyed from his bodily home.
So the people, his hearth-companions, sorrowed for the lord who had been laid low.
They said that of all the kings upon earth he was the man most gracious and fair-minded,
kindest to his people and keenest to win fame.