Hoo-ray! Sutton Hoo

Another fun research day. The latest family meanderings have taken me to Woodbridge, Suffolk.  Lily Maud's grandparents and great-grandparents (I have not traced further back than them yet), were from Woodbridge.  And where is Woodbridge, I wondered?  Only on the opposite bank of the River Deban from Sutton Hoo! 

Sutton Hoo is the site of the famous and most significant Anglo-Saxon burial ground in Britain, dating back to the 6th and early 7th centuries.  The Romans had scarpered by 410 AD, and pagan Germanic hordes (from Anglia and Saxony) began moving into the area, and by the 7th century a number of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had been formed.   It is generally agreed that it is a 7th century king named Raedwald of East Anglia that is the king buried at Sutton Hoo.

 

Our 19th century Quinton relations in Woodbridge, some of whom were shoe makers and lived on the still dear little street called Theatre Street, would have looked over these burial mounds every time they gazed across the river, but since archaeological excavations did not begin until 1938, they would have lived their whole lives never knowing what lay beneath these grassy knolls.

map credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wicklaw_and_Ipswich.jpg

Sutton Hoo photo credits: http://www.britishmuseum.org,

Ipswich

Custom House and Old Wherry Inn, Ipswich, 1870s

It's been a balmy minus 31 degrees here in Eastern Canada today, so I stayed inside and worked on some more family history.   Off to Ipswich I went, via the internet, and found another distant relation's well-researched family tree pages - complete with sources - who is connected to us through Sarah Quinton's younger brother (Sarah Quinton being Lily Maud Meadows' mother), and I was able to correct some errors with the Meadows information I had.  I sent him an email message of thanks, so I may hear back from him at some point.

After discovering in the 1881 census that Lily Maud's father, Frederick Meadows, was a shipwright, I did a bit of digging around to see what I could find out about shipwrights in 19th century Ipswich.  Suffice it to say that Ipswich was once the largest grain terminal in Europe, so there was an ongoing demand for ships and barges to transport it around Britain and to the continent.  Apparently, each shipwright would have his own chest of tools that he took to work with him each day (picture below), containing about 75 different tools.

In 1881, the Meadows family lived at 20 Cavendish Street, which was very close to the Orwell River waterfront.  I went to Google Street View and the houses are not there any more - there are some sort of commercial enterprises taking up that end of the street now.  

A shipwright's chest c. 1850, with around 75 tools in it.

Photo credits:http://www.bargemen.co.uk/images/shipwrights.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47120000/jpg/_47120383_dolphin_wharf_1870s.jpg