Have you hoard about it?

Here's one we prepared earlier ...

We went for our Sunday stroll round the Open Air Museum this morning, stopping along the way to watch the blacksmith at work in the forge there. He was making nails: it had taken much time and sweat to make a dozen last time he'd been up, and he was hoping to produce at least fourteen today. We left him to it and continued on our way, stopping once again on the way out at the Iron Age hut. They had a Saxon in residence, demonstrating Saxon crafting skills: shields had been left casually propped up against the fence, presumably in readiness to repel any invading armies who dared disturb his crafting ... There was a handy looking axe buried in a block of wood (but no swords in stones we noted), and various other items such as a decorated dagger sheath and a wooden hammer. We were quite impressed until we stuck our noses inside and peeking behind the door spotted a rather more modern 21st century collection of woodworking tools. What a cheat, we thought.

Passing the blacksmith again, still laboriously hammering away at his meagre collection of nails, we did think about suggesting he just went and borrowed a few off the New Age Saxon ... but in the end decided not too: he seemed to be having such fun - and at least he was genuinely making them from scratch.

Needless to say the Madwoman once again failed to bring the camera with her, so we've used our initiative to give this post a bit more of a Saxon flavour: the pictures at the top show us using a towel, an eggbox and some gravy bones to recreate the discovery of the Sutton Hoo hoard.