The Dig: A Story Unearthed Exhibition

The Dig is a film by Netflix exploring the story of the excavation of the Great Ship Burial at Sutton Hoo in 1939. Many of the events and characters depicted in it are inspired by real events and real people.

The Dig: A Story Unearthed is a new temporary exhibition at Sutton Hoo and tells the untold stories of the real people featured in Netflix's The Dig.

The film, which starred Ralph Fiennes as archaeologist Basil Brown and Carey Mulligan as Edith Pretty, was based on the John Preston novel of the same name. It explores the excavation of the Great Ship Burial in 1939, which revealed the final resting place of an important Anglo-Saxon king and went on to become one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time.

As well as Sutton Hoo, Basil Brown also confirmed the existence of an early Anglo-Saxon village in West Stow, near Bury St Edmunds, occupied from AD 420-650, over 400 years before the Norman Conquest. In 1947, Basil Brown ran an excavation at West Stow which unearthed two Romano-British pottery kilns. During the excavation, it became clear that there had also been an Anglo-Saxon settlement on the site.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 8 May 2025 and will be held in the High Hall exhibition building, where it will feature some of the original costumes, jewellery and props used in the film.

It will focus on six people from the Sutton Hoo story: Edith Pretty, the former landowner who commissioned the dig, her son Robert Pretty, and archaeologists Basil Brown and Peggy Piggott. Serious amateur photographers, Mercie Lack and Barbara Wagstaff, will also feature.

The Dig: A Story Unearthed opens on 8 May 2025 and runs until 25 January 2026. Entry to the exhibition is included in the entry ticket, which is free for National Trust members.

To discover the incredible true story and meet some of the characters involved with one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time visit The Sutton Hoo website.