Lot 397: 3ARCHAEOLOGY-- ANGLO-SAXON FINDS AT EYE, SUFFOLK, 1818.

FOUR ATTRACTIVE COLOURED EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DRAWINGS IN PEN, INK AND WASHES BY WILLIAM HENRY BROOKE (1772-1860) of an excavation and Anglo-Saxon artefacts in 1818 at Abbey Farm [now called the Eye cemetery] near Broome Hall at Eye in Suffolk, then the seat of the Marquess of Cornwallis, the drawing of the dig depicting two men excavating in a deep pit, with the town of Eye in the distance, inscribed 'Site of the Barrow where upwards of 100 roman [in fact Anglo-Saxon] Urns were found -- Swords [,] small Helmet, Bit of Bridle, Horses Bones &c in a field on the estate of Broome Hall near Eye Suffolk seat of Marquis Cornwallis 21 Oct 1818'; the inscriptions on the drawings of urns and fragments add the names of Mr Cobbold of Ipswich Cliff and Mr Grimes, the Marquess's gamekeeper, who presumably made the discovery and who are perhaps those shown in the main drawing and described as 'modern Goths' in the Gentleman's Magazine, and that one of the globular urns was 'filled with Human Bones half burnt, sand & red Earth', and indicate that the discovery was made in August 1818 while the drawings were made in October that year, four drawings mounted on paper, uniformly mounted, framed and glazed, size of apertures 6 x 8½ inches and 6½ x 8¾ inches, 8¼ x 6¼ inches, overall sizes 10¼ x 12½ and 12½ x 10 inches, Abbey Farm [Eye cemetery] 21 October 1818

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DRAWINGS OF ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS. Drawings of this nature were the main means of making pictorial records before the invention of photography -- they are primary archaeological records.

These particular drawings, besides being good and attractive examples of Brooke's work, are of considerable archaeological importance: they are of a sixth-century Anglo-Saxon [not Roman] cemetery about which little was previously known; they show that it was a mixed cemetery of inhumations and cremations; they confirm, by the distant depiction of Eye itself, the exact location of the site; they show that it included mounds or barrows (previously not fully understood); and they indicate that the diggings went quite deep. Very little was known about the dig itself before the discovery of these drawings.

The images of the cremation urns are important because they clearly show the nature of the urns and very little survives elsewhere from the excavation beyond some written descriptions. They are of known sixth-century varieties associated with the north and west East Anglian settlements and are significant complementary evidence of those distinctive cultures, different from those of the royal and commercial domains centred on Ipswich and Sutton Hoo.

Three of the urns from the Eye cemetery are known to survive: one is in the British Museum, another is at Moyses Hall, Bury St Edmunds, and a third at Cambridge. The Ipswich Museum has an urn said to be from Culford and possibly one of the seventeen from the Eye excavation kept by the Marquess of Cornwallis, who afterwards lived at Culford. None of the surviving urns are those depicted in these drawings.

Dr Steven Plunkett, Keeper of Archaeology at Ipswich Borough Museums writes: 'The site and its finds are still of great importance to the archaeological record, because the distribution of such 6th century graveyards, and the distinct cultural character of each as represented by the particular types of grave-goods and cremation urns found in them, are one of the ways in which the settlement of the East Anglian Kingdom is most clearly understood: and these matters are studied scientifically in a total view, rather than piecemeal, so that new evidence about Eye is quite critical and gives new dimension to the record.' The drawings are reproduced in black and white and described by Stanley West, 'A Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Material from Suffolk', East Anglian Archaeology, Report No. 84, 1998.

William Henry Brooke (1772-1860) is primarily known as a portrait painter, book illustrator and satirical draughtsman. He made other archaeological drawings of sites and general views in Suffolk. While unsigned, Brooke's distinctive style and handwriting make his authorship of these drawings indisputable. (Rev. H. Creed, 'On the Castle and Honour of Eye', Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 11, Part 1, 1855, pp. 117-124; Gentleman's Magazine, 1818, ii. pp. 131-133 account of the dig on 29 July 1818 by 'Viator'; DNB).