The Big Dig



By Baldrick Llewelyn Digger (no relation to anyone)


Our visit to Northamptonshire in search of King Offa’s palace was one of the major archaeological events of the last hundred years. Nearly as rich a find as Sutton Hoo, and almost as controversial as our discovery that Stonehenge was simply the result of a surprise visit by a Neolithic Ground Force team.
We discovered evidence of a small, closely knit community. A community that lived in an atmosphere of violence and suspicion. A community that had been cut off from the outside world. A prehistoric society where only basic social and intellectual skills were displayed. Where language was rudimentary in the extreme.

So enough about Irthlingborough today. We were interested in the site of Offa’s palace. Why the King of England, with a territory from the North Sea to the Welsh Mountains chose to put his palace in Irthlingborough is anyone’s guess. Our own suspicion was that he wanted to be close to the Doc Shop to get a cut-price pair of leopard-skin DMs.

Digging through the “Nene Park” layer of discarded chip boxes and Diamond Burger wrappers took four days of careful excavation. Then two feet of loose soil had to be removed before we found ourselves looking at the remains of the palace. Mostly we were looking at the ironstone floor, but a few stone blocks, still bearing the interior wattle and daub, remained. On the ground we found broken pots, and a scrap of parchment was miraculously preserved within a clay jar. On it we found these enigmatic words of Anglo Saxon, still speaking to us across the centuries: “Gone up Olly Twist. London Pride’s back on. Offa.” Was he speaking of the famous pride of the East Saxons, resolute in retaking their capital from Offa’s Mercian army? Was Olly Twist a local landmark – perhaps the area of raised ground now known as Crow Hill? From the top of Olly Twist, if indeed it was that hill, Offa would have had a good view of the Essex army as it advanced towards his palace up the Nene Valley.

Beneath the “Offa Layer”, we found hints of the darker past. A scrap of red, white and blue cloth was found to bear runic letters of some kind. We could make out “R**DEN + D**M**S”. Assuming DEN to be the Angle word for a clearing, and R maybe the Latin initial “REX” or King, we can see that a Germanic ruler – perhaps one of the Mid-Anglian tribal leaders, who preceded and were conquered by the Mercians - was making a claim. He was claiming to be “King of the Clearing”. The Cross was clearly a sign of his Christian faith; perhaps the last word was “Demons”, referring to his power, through the totemic power of his cross, over the dark forces that were thought to rule the shadowy forests of Rockingham stretching along the banks and slopes of the Nene. Perhaps in particular he was making a linguistic claim against those Anglians in Peterborough who insisted on calling the river the “Neen”, when it is clearly pronounced “Nenn”. Or possibly he was referring to the dark power that is renounced in the incantation written on the outer wall of Offa’s palace, in the words “We hate Ketrin”. Who Ketrin was, we have no idea. But he or she must have been an occult force of true evil.

So we trudged back up the hill to the centre of Irthlingborough. The local people gazed slack-jawed at us, reminding us that, in so many ways, they are the true descendants of those primitive tribespeople that lived just fifteen short centuries ago. Some attempted to communicate, but sadly in a form of broken English that we had trouble understanding. We offered them beads and fire-water, but they stole our watches, car and camera equipment and threw us in the river.

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