Bressingham's Saxon skeleton given Christian funeral

Island invaders

• The Saxons, Angles and Jutes began attacking Roman Britain from their native lands in northern Germany and southern Denmark in AD 410

• The continental invaders were generally called "Saxons" by their neighbours. England is still called "Sasana" in Gaelic

• By 500 AD, many invaders had settled and they occupied most of England east of a line from the Humber to the Isle of Wight

Source: BBC History

A Saxon skeleton has been reburied three years after it was discovered in the ruins of a burnt-out Norfolk pub.

The remains were unearthed when the Chequers Inn, Bressingham, was being demolished following a fire in 2009.

Tests revealed the middle-aged man was alive around 665 AD.

Following a funeral service, the man was reburied in the churchyard of St John the Baptist, Bressingham, just yards from his original burial place under the pub.

The service was held by the Rev Canon Tony Billett, and the coffin and headstone donated by local companies.

Diana Burroughes, a church warden at St John the Baptist, said: "He was buried on his back, west to east, which is a Christian way of burying him.

"It must be important he's returned to where he was buried originally and near to where he lived."

The skeleton is not complete and is believed to have been partially destroyed when the pub was underpinned.

A DNA test revealed its age.

Ms Burroughes said: "Not in our wildest dreams did we think he was as old as he is."

The 17th Century Chequers Inn caught fire on 10 October 2009 and has since been rebuilt.

King Arthur, 'Once and Future King'

By Michael Wood

The fantastical tale of King Arthur, the hero warrior, is one of the great themes of British literature. But was it just invented to restore British pride after the Norman invasion? Michael Wood puts the king in the spotlight.

A great theme

The core myths of the Celtic peoples centre on the great cycle of stories based on the life and exploits of King Arthur. These legends link Arthur to a common poetic idea of Britain as a kind of paradise of the West, with a primeval unspoiled past. Together they add up to the greatest theme in the literature of the British Isles.

Together they add up to the greatest theme in the literature of the British Isles.

The historic figure of Arthur as a victorious fifth-century warrior, leading Britons into battle against Saxon invaders, has so far proved impossible for historians to confirm. In fact the one contemporary source that we do have for the time, 'The Ruin and Conquest of Britain' by the British monk and historian Gildas (c.500-70) gives somebody else's name altogether as the leader of the Britons.

So where does the legend come from? Why has Arthur - the 'once and future king' of the poet Thomas Malory - remained so important to us, and why has he been important in the past?

First layer of the legend

The King Arthur that we know of today is a composite of layers of different legends, written by different authors at different times. He appears in his first incarnation in the 'History of the Britons', written in 830 and attributed to a writer called Nennius.

Here Arthur appears as a heroic British general and a Christian warrior, during the tumultuous late fifth century, when Anglo-Saxon tribes were attacking Britain. In one of the most pregnant passages in British history, Nennius says:

Then in those days Arthur fought against them with the kings of the Britons, but he was commander [dux bellorum] in those battles.

Nennius then gives a list of 12 battles fought by Arthur, a list that belongs in an old tradition of battle-list poems in Welsh poetry. Some of the names appear in other early poems and annals, stretched over a wide period of time and place, and the list represents the kind of eclectic plundering that was the bard´s stock-in-trade.

So the 12 battles of Arthur are not history. One man could not possibly have fought in all of them. The 12 battles are in fact the first signs of a legend.