Northumberland's newest museum has secured a deal to bring Anglo-Saxon 'treasures' to the region ahead of its opening in February next year.
Ad Gefrin in Wooler will loan a range of 6th and 7th century objects from the British Museum and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to tell the story of the Anglo-Saxon Golden Age, more specifically the former summer palace of the Northumbrian Kings and Queens, Yeavering. The site, which was not discovered until 1949 through aerial photography, was excavated between 1953 - 1962.
And its Great Hall will be recreated at the new visitor experience, which is hoping to become the Sutton Hoo (the site of an early medieval burial ground that includes the grave of an Anglo-Saxon king) of the north. On the way to achieving that aim, the museum has secured loans of a replica of the Franks Casket from the British Museum and one of the finest examples of Anglo-Saxon glass ever found in England, the Castle Eden Claw Beaker, which returns to the North East for the first time in more than three decades.
