Banquet Hall From the Age of Beowulf

The site of a royal Anglo-Saxon feas ring hall—the first of its kind found in more than three decades—has been discovered in the village of Lyminge, just a short distance from the White Cliffs of Dover. The hall dates to about A.D. 600, the time when pagan warrior kings ruled southern Britain.

Old English poetry often describes these halls as the scenes of days-long royal feasts and banquets. And in Beowulf, the monster Grendel is slain after terrorizing one very much like it. The site, though, has an additional distinction: it spans both the pre-Christian and Christian eras and tells us much about the transition between the two.

Artifacts uncovered during the dig link the site to the local Kings of Kent, who probably stayed at Lyminge in the pre-Christian period. In another part of the village, archaeologists are uncovering the remains of a monastery and documenting the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kings to Christianity.

Archeology Magazine