Illington: A Study of a Breckland Parish and Its Anglo-Saxon Cemetery

Aby A. Davison, B. Green and W. Milligan Part of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Illington was excavated by Group Captain Knocker in 1949. 200 cremation urns and 3 inhumations were mapped and lifted, and the remains of about two hundred other vessels were also recovered. Many of the decorated urns belong to the Illington/Lackford workshop, and the finds assemblage as a whole suggests that the cemetery was in use during the 6th and 7th centuries. The cremated human bones were the subject of a pioneering study by the late Calvin Wells. Alan Davison's parish survey did not locate any Early Saxon domestic sites, and it is thought that the original Saxon holding may have been larger than the medieval parish.