West Stow

West Stow is a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon Village located near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England. It's excellent, and I'd advise anyone to visit it!
Not only is there the village, but there is an excellent visitor's centre and museum - which house all the finds from the original Anglo-Saxon village of Stow. Better yet, members of Ða-Engliscan-GesiÞas (The English Companions) are admitted absolutely free!

To get in contact with West Stow (for a brochure if you want to visit it for instance) write to:
West Stow Country Park & Anglo-Saxon Village, The Visitor Centre, Icklingham Road, West Stow, Bury St Edmunds, IP28 6HG, England.

Anyway, here are the pictures I took there in October of 1999 - click on an image to see it full size.

  They've got real pigs, snuffling just the way they would have fourteen hundred years ago!

Tools set up for crafting.

Storage shelf in one of the houses.

Tapestry in the great hall.

Outside of one of the thatched buildings.

A slatted roof - as opposed to thatch. The village has been built so that all the different building technologies are represented - including some interesting discoveries about those pit buildings the Englisc were supposed to have. Basically, they had floorboards over the 'hole' - they didn't live in the pit as was previously supposed. The pits fill up with mud in just a few weeks!

One of the thatched buildings.

Inside one of the houses - a shield, seax, and spear hung for storage.

Another shot of the crafting tools.

Inside of the great hall.

Outside of the great hall.

My favourite pic - one of the houses.