National Trust brings Sutton Hoo alive with £4m revamp

Suffolk site reopens enhanced with 27-metre ship sculpture, seventh-century treasures and immersive exhibitions

Eighty years ago this summer, a beautifully situated if unusually lumpy field in Suffolk became, briefly, the site of an archaeological sensation.

An immense Anglo-Saxon ship burial had been uncovered, loaded with some of the most astonishing gold and jewelled artefacts ever found. But the looming outbreak of war in July and August 1939 meant that Sutton Hoo's greatest treasures were hastily dug out of the ground and packed off to anonymous safety in a London tube station, later to become some of the most iconic exhibits of the British Museum.