Tranmer House is a country house in

Sutton Hoo Sutton Hoo is the site of two early medieval cemeteries dating from the 6th to 7th centuries near the English town of Woodbridge. Archaeologists have been excavating the area since 1938, when a previously undisturbed ship burial containing a ...

Woodbridge Woodbridge may refer to: Places Australia *Woodbridge, Western Australia formerly called ''West Midland'' *Woodbridge, Tasmania Canada *Woodbridge, Ontario England *Woodbridge, Suffolk, the location of ** Woodbridge (UK Parliament constituency ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

, England, dating from 1910. The house is located on the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

burial site, and in 1938 was the home of

Edith Pretty Edith May Pretty (née Dempster; 1 August 1883 – 17 December 1942) was an English landowner on whose land the Sutton Hoo ship burial was discovered after she hired Basil Brown, a local excavator and amateur archeologist, to find out if anythin ...

. In June 1938, Pretty employed Basil Brown to undertake the excavation of a range of burial mounds on the estate, leading to Brown's discovery in May 1939 of a

ship burial A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as the tomb for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave. This style of burial was pr ...

, "one of the most important archaeological discoveries of all time". The house is now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

History and description

Tranmer House, then called Sutton Hoo House, was designed in 1910 by

John Shewell Corder John Shewell Corder (1856 Westoe, South Tyneside – 19 July 1922 Ipswich) was an English architect, artist and antiquarian. Early life Corder came from a well connected Quaker family with links in East Anglia, North England and Berkshire. He was ...

, an architect based in

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

, for a Suffolk artist, John Chadwick Lomax. In 1926 the Sutton Hoo estate was bought by

and her husband, Frank, for £15,250. Edith Pretty, born Edith Dempster in 1883, inherited a considerable fortune from her father upon his death in 1925. Following Frank Pretty's death in 1934, Edith Pretty developed an interest in excavating the burial mounds that lay to the north-east of Tranmer House and engaged a local archaeologist, Basil Brown, to undertake two digs, in 1938 and 1939. During the second dig, Brown located the

ship burial site under Mound 1, "the largest Anglo-Saxon ship burial ever discovered". The trove of treasure within made Sutton Hoo "the richest intact early medieval grave in Europe with a burial chamber full of dazzling riches". Edith Pretty died in 1942, having gifted the Sutton Hoo treasure to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. The house was sold by her son's trustees in the late 1940s, and was owned by a number of local farming families until bought by the Tranmers. Following the death of Annie Tranmer, the house and the Sutton Hoo burial site were bequeathed to the National Trust in 1998. The Trust renamed the house in acknowledgement of the donation. John Bettley and

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

, in their ''Suffolk: East'' volume of The Buildings of England series, describe the architectural style of Tranmer as "Tudor". The house now operates as a museum, while the stable block, and original squash court, form part of the Sutton Hoo Visitor Centre.

Footnotes

References

Sources

* * {{cite book , first1 = John , last1 = Bettley , first2 = Nikolaus , last2 = Pevsner , authorlink2 = Nikolaus Pevsner , title = Suffolk: East , series = Buildings of England , year = 2015 , publisher =

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

, location = New Haven, US and London , isbn = 978-0-300-19654-2 , oclc = 995084088 , url = https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/995084088

External links

Sutton Hoo
at the

website Country houses in Suffolk National Trust properties in Suffolk 1938 archaeological discoveries 1939 archaeological discoveries Anglo-Saxon art Archaeological museums in England Archaeological sites in Suffolk Sutton, Suffolk Sutton Hoo