In around 670AD, a important Saxon lady was buried on Roundway Down, close to Devizes. She was laid to rest on a wooden bed, wearing a Christian cross on a small enamelled disc, mounted on a chain between two gold pins. The heads of the pins are set with garnets, linked by a gold chain to a central gold mounted glass paste jewel. Made in Ireland, it has a moulded cross-shaped design, which would have been enamelled. The chain has a filigree boar’s head on each terminal and there is a simple interlace design on the back.

Her extraordinary gold jewellery shows that she was a Christian, and probably an abbess from a local noble family. She was also buried with a rare gold coin minted in Valois in Switzerland. Perhaps this shows that she had travelled abroad, making a pilgrimage or learning about the religious life.

The body of the Abbess was placed in a prehistoric burial mound that looked over the Royal estate at Bromham in the valley below. Her wooden bed was lowered into the grave, its shape marked out by the iron fittings which still survive. The mourners climbed in to the grave, and laid her clothed body on the bed, together with her exceptional jewellery set. At her feet they placed a bronze-bound wooden tankard and a locked wooden box. At the corners of the grave the burnt bones of cat, dog, horse, boar, fox and deer were carefully positioned. After the funeral, the grave with filled with earth and a mound was raised above her.

The Roundway Abbess was one of the last people to be buried with objects placed in the grave by family members. After 670 AD, the teaching of the Church discouraged burying the dead with personal possessions. This abrupt change shows how quickly people embraced the new Christian religion.

This reconstruction view of her burial was created by John Girvan.

In 2000, Durham University researchers, Sarah Semple and Howard Williams, undertook an excavation on the early medieval burial on Roundway Down (WAHNM 2001 – preliminary note). The finds archive, including human remains, are still at the university, and their research is now approaching completion.