Could Netflix follow ‘The Dig’ with a film in Lichfield on the Staffordshire Hoard?

The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest-ever find of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver … could Netflix make a follow-up to ‘The Dig’?

Patrick Comerford

The Pandemic lockdown means that in the evenings I have watched more drama series and more movies on Netflix than I expected. The latest series to watch was Bridgerton, following The Crown, Unorthodox, Emily in Paris and The Queen’s Gambit, and the latest film was The Dig, telling the story of the Anglo-Saxon find in a field near Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in 1939.

The film should attract anyone interested in history and archaeology. But the Guardian reported on Saturday [6 February 2021] how archaeologists at the British Museum and National Trust have experienced a surge in interest in Sutton Hoo. For a while, this was Netflix’s No 1 most watched film in the UK.

Dr Sue Brunning, the curator of the Early Mediaeval Europe Collections, at the British Museum, spotted early last week how #SuttonHoo is trending on Twitter interest in Sutton Hoo has surged since the recent launch of The Dig on Netflix. Dr Brunning advised the actors and filmmakers behind the production of The Dig.

Traffic to the museum’s web pages about the treasure has tripled, and a video recorded by Dr Brunning about the Sutton Hoo helmet, reconstructed from fragments discovered in the grave, has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in the past month. For a while, the film was Netflix’s No 1 most watched in the UK. Her blog about the discovery has crashed due to the exceptional volume of hits, and her email inbox and Twitter feed have been swamped with inquiries.

There has been a similar rise in interest at the site of Sutton Hoo, Laura Howarth, the archaeology and engagement manager at the site, told the Guardian. This new wave of interest extends to the house and grounds once owned by Edith Pretty, portrayed by Carey Mulligan, who commissioned a self-taught local archaeologist, Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), to excavate the large mounds on her land.

Sutton Hoo is managed by the National Trust. Although the visitor centre and the Pretty house are currently closed, there has been a surge of interest in their website and social media channels, and more people are walking the field, eager to see where the real-life Brown worked, eventually with a team of other archaeologists, more than 80 years ago.

Both Dr Brunning and Ms Howarth hope this new wave of interest will fuel curiosity about the Anglo-Saxons and the early 7th century, the period when the unknown king was buried at Sutton Hoo.

A window in Lichfield Cathedral tells the story of the arrival of Christianity in Mercia, one of largest kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

You may well ask, what did the Anglo-Saxons do for us?

The idea of England as a nation emerged under the Anglo-Saxons. The Venerable Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731, although their Saxon kingdoms were not united as a recognisably English nation until the 10th century.

Christianity first came to Britain with the Romans. But the Anglo-Saxons gradually became Christians through the influence of Roman missionaries and monks from Ireland and Scotland. Anglo-Saxon church sites include Lichfield Cathedral and Saint Chad’s Church in Lichfield, and Saint Editha’s Church and Polesworth Abbey in Tamworth. Tamworth Castle too stands on an Anglo-Saxon site.

Many of the most common words in use in everyday modern English come directly from Old English, and, as the Guardian pointed out on Saturday, it is possible to construct simple sentences in Anglo-Saxon English that are essentially unchanged today.

The Anglo-Saxons have left a collection of rich and evocative poetry and literature that includes the poetry of Beowulf, which talks about huge gold treasure hoards and dragon hoards, religious verse such as The Dream of the Rood, and historical accounts like the Battle of Maldon, which tells of an Anglo-Saxon defeat in Essex by invading Vikings in 991.

A folded cross was one of the few religious items found in the Staffordshire Hoard

With this renewed interest in Sutton Hoo, I wonder whether Netflix could follow up The Dig with another film set in Lichfield about the discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard. After all, this is the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork yet found, with 3,500 items of gold and silver and another 3,500 pieces of garnet cloisonné jewellery.

This too dates from the 7th century, with many of artefacts made in the 6th and 7th centuries.

The Staffordshire Hoard was discovered in a field near Hammerwich, south-west of Lichfield, in 2009. It has been described as having ‘radical’ importance in Anglo-Saxon archaeology, and the quality of the workmanship is extremely high.

The hoard was found in a remote area, just south of Watling Street, 4 km west of Wall and the Roman site at Letocetum. The find was made Terry Herbert, a member of Bloxwich Research and Metal Detecting Club, on 5 July 2009, when he was searching an area of recently ploughed farmland owned by Fred Johnson. Excavation continued in 2010, and further finds were made in 2012.

The Staffordshire Hoard eclipses, at least in quantity, the find at Sutton Hoo 70 years earlier. At the time of it discovery it was said the Staffordshire Hoard ‘is going to alter our perceptions of Anglo-Saxon England as radically, if not more so, than the Sutton Hoo discoveries.’

The hoard has featured in the BBC 2 documentary Saxon Hoard: A Golden Discovery (2012) presented by Dan Snow and Secrets of the Saxon Gold (2012), presented by Tony Robinson.

But a Netflix movie about the Staffordshire Hoard might truly eclipse The Dig. My only question is, would Ralph Fiennes play Terry Herbert?

Who would play Terry Herbert in a Netflix film about the Staffordshire Hoard?

One of Lichfield’s charming Tudor-style houses on Beacon Street is for sale

Ardmore Cottage (left) and Nether Beacon House (right) on Beacon Street … Ardmore Cottage is on the market (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Lichfield, I regularly enjoy the stroll along Beacon Street between the Hedgehog and Lichfield Cathedral and the heart of the city. In the light of early morning and in the late evening, with the birdsong in the trees and the lights of the winter sun, there is a semi-rural feeling in the air, enhanced by the rustic look of many of the houses along Beacon Street.

Beacon Street is a truly charming area, with some timber-framed houses and cottages dating back to the 18th century or earlier. Later houses, influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Tudor-style pubs like the Feathers and the Fountain, add to the character of the area and give it an ambience that is a mixture of both rural setting and late Victorian suburb.

Some years ago, during December snows, when a Facebook friend posted photographs from this area, I told him if I was to live in any street in Lichfield, I would probably want to buy a house on Beacon Street.

One of these charming, timber-framed, Tudor-style houses, Ardmore Cottage, a four-bedroom house, is currently on the market through Knight Frank of Birmingham, who are inviting offers in excess of £495,000.

Ardmore Cottage, Nether Beacon House and Ardmore House once formed one house, but they were later divided into three separate houses, and they have Grade II listing.

Ardmore Cottage in the Knight Frank brochure

Ardmore Cottage is a pretty, black and white cottage dating from the late 17th century or early 18th century, with a late 18th century addition and later alterations. It is timber-framed with brick infill and brick, tile roofs and brick stacks, and has an abundance of character and charm.

Ardmore Cottage and Nether Beacon House are a pair, built on a double-depth plan with a later range to the rear. Outside, from the Beacon Street frontage, there are two storeys, a symmetrical three-window range, and a 19th century single-storey wing at the end of each house.

There is a hipped roof with three gables, and the timber-frame was applied in the late 19th century to the partly plastered stone plinth.

The entrances to the two houses at the centre have porches recessed behind Tudor arches and Art Nouveau iron gates. The half-glazed doors have leaded glazing and side lights. Inside, the houses retain their beams, fireplaces and original features.

The three-light projecting windows have cornices, but the two central first-floor windows are narrow windows, and the windows on wings date from the 20th century. The left return has and an exposed square framing, three flat-roofed dormers and a tall stack.

Behind, this pair of houses has a three-storey, four-window range, with coped gables, end stacks, and a modillioned brick cornice. The windows have sills, and there are rubbed brick flat arches over the 12-pane sashes, with nine-pane sashes on the second floor.

The right return at Nether Beacon has 20th additions and entrance on the ground floor. The left return has a small, two-storey rear wing with an end stack and return, a 4:12:4-pane, tripartite sash window and is taller than the adjoining front range due to slope of ground.

Ardmore Cottage is entered through a timber-framed storm porch, and the hallway leads to the principal reception rooms, with a staircase rising to the first-floor landing.

The drawing room has a feature fireplace and a large bay window, and an intriguing trap door that leads down to the cellar. The dining room has quarry tiled floor and wooden beams and the kitchen also has feature brick and beams on the walls. There is an ornamental, courtyard-style terrace garden a parking area.

The principal bedroom is en-suite, and there are two further double bedrooms and a family bathroom on the first floor. The fourth bedroom is at the top of the house on the second floor.

Did the stairs in Ardmore Cottage originally come from Fisherwick Hall? (Photograph: Knight Frank brochure)

I sometimes wonder how Ardmore House and Ardmore Cottage in Lichfield came to have such distinctively Irish names. Some years ago, in her blog Lichfield Lore, the Lichfield historian Kate Gomez recalls how it is said that a staircase from Fisherwick Hall, the former home of the Marquesses of Donegall, was taken to a house on Beacon Street known as Ardmore.

I wonder whether these are the stairs in Ardmore Cottage, or whether they are stairs in Ardmore House on Nether Beacon, recently on the market through Downes and Daughters of Lichfield, with an asking price of £675,000.

The paired Nether Beacon House was once a house for boarders from the Friary School in the 1920s, and it has a curious sign at the front door: ‘Beware of the Cats.’ Each time I see it, it reminds me of how Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer, and his cat, Hodge, who is remembered in a whimsical passage in James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1799).

Boswell recalls that when he observed that Hodge was a fine cat, Johnson said, ‘Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this.’ And then, as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, added, ‘but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’

Johnson was known to go out of his way to buy oysters to feed Hodge, even to the point of annoying his servants by pampering his pets. After Hodge’s death, the poet Percival Stockdale wrote ‘An Elegy on the Death of Dr Johnson’s Favourite Cat’:

Who, by his master when caressed
Warmly his gratitude expressed;
And never failed his thanks to purr
Whene’er he stroked his sable fur.

A bronze statue to Hodge by the sculptor Jon Bickley stands facing Dr Johnson’s house in Gough Square, off Fleet Street, London. It was unveiled in 1997 and shows Hodge sitting on top of Johnson’s Dictionary, alongside some empty oyster shells. The monument is inscribed with the words ‘a very fine cat indeed.’

Ardmore Cottage is on sale through Knight Frank Birmingham, 1 Colmore Row, Birmingham B3 2BJ

Ardmore Cottage (left) and Nether Beacon House (right) on Beacon Street … how did Ardmore Cottage get its Irish-sounding name? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)