I take issue with the statement by Mike Hopwood, who claims that visitors found the Sutton Hoo experience underwhelming (Lumps in a grassy field transformed into ‘immersive’ tour of riches dug up at Sutton Hoo, 5 August).
When the site opened in 2002, I was the education officer, and such were the numbers that visitors had to be turned away. The air of excitement as visitors were able to look down into a replica of the boat, its burial chamber and contents was palpable. The Sutton Hoo Society provided excellent tours of the burial mounds and painted vivid word pictures of the discovery of the ship. Later, visitors were able to handle replicas of some of the treasures. The many school groups who paid return visits to Sutton Hoo year on year would certainly not have done so had they found the site underwhelming.
Furthermore, Annie Tranmer donated the site to the National Trust in 1998, not 1968 as your report said. So Mike Hopwood’s “subsequent decades” boils down to less than two decades.
Nan Waterfall
Woodbridge, Suffolk
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