During Yeavering’s 2025 Festival of Archaeology, The Gefrin Trust sat down with Trustee and Yeavering Excavation Director Professor Sarah Semple. Sarah is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology at Durham University and was recently elected Fellow of the British Academy. Among other distinctions, she is currently carrying the British Academy-funded Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture to its completion. Sarah spoke about her long-standing fascination with the site and her 20-year relationship with The Gefrin Trust.

Gefrin Trust: When did you first encounter Yeavering and Brian-Hope Taylor’s work at the site?

Sarah: I was an undergraduate at UCL in the early 1990s. At the time, UCL still had a degree in Medieval Archaeology. Hope-Taylor’s work at Yeavering, and his 1977 report in particular, held a seminal influence in early medieval archaeology. Even though there’d been discoveries at places like Chalton (Hampshire) and Cowdery’s Down (Hampshire) of similar royal complexes, it’s really Hope-Taylor’s discoveries at Yeavering that remained really evocative of what an early medieval royal palace or site might look like. His illustrations and his writing gave a vivid, realistic angle to the discoveries.

Learning about Yeavering as an undergraduate gave me a real excitement, drive and passion about the site itself—and I knew I wanted to visit it. But it also was instrumental, or one of the instrumental sites, that made me work to become a specialist in the archaeology of early medieval Britain. 

The early medieval period is this incredible, influential period during which we see interactions between different places and people; political identities form, and the first signs of kingship and authority emerge—the first laws. And wrapped into this 7th century dynamic we see the formation of large and powerful kingdoms. Much of what happens in the first millennium lays the foundations for subsequent centuries. 

Gefrin Trust: Do you have a memory of your first visit to Yeavering?

Sarah: Yes! I arrived to the Department of Archaeology at Durham University in 2006. Rosemary Cramp was still very present in both the department and region—and indeed nationally—and of course very interested in what I would like to pursue. I came up independently to Yeavering once I’d moved up to the northeast; I simply wanted to see the site and I was really blown away by its location—how evocative it was. 

My PhD research had been particularly focused on early medieval reception and perceptions of the prehistoric past. And, of course, Yeavering featured large in that because the prehistoric monuments here—the henges, barrows, stones and the hillfort—are such an influence on the design and layout of the early medieval site and hall complexes. I was inspired by people like Richard Bradley who was one of the first people to write about these kinds of connections, and my supervisor John Blair, and also inspired by colleagues who were training at the time, like Howard Williams, who were really interested in the same kinds of ideas about how ancient remains become a means of forging and situating early medieval identity and power. 

Gefrin Trust: How did you become involved with the Trust?

Sarah: Very soon after I arrived, Rosemary introduced me to Roger Miket. I was quickly co-opted into the Gefrin Trust in 2006-2007. This started off my 20 year relationship (so far!) with the Gefrin Trust. Shortly after that, two or three years later, we started some experimental geophysical work on the site. The sands and gravels were notoriously unreceptive to magnetometry. So we came out and trialled resistivity—a very well-known, simple technique—which produced some really interesting results. This made me think that there was some real potential here to draw out more information and at some point return to the site and re-excavate.

Gefrin Trust: What’s been the highlight of returning to the site in the last few years?

Sarah: First and foremost, to be able to conduct fieldwork and excavation on this site is an incredible privilege—that alone is just enormously exciting. Returning to this truly evocative location where, in some senses, some of the first ideas and concepts about early medieval archaeology were born is a real high point. The other real excitement has been engaging with Hope-Taylor’s work. We use a combination of techniques where we relocate trenches, we re-excavate part of Hope-Taylor’s sequence, then we extend and look at new unexcavated sequences. It’s also given us a real insight into the accuracy of his work. It has also allowed us to apply scientific dating and other methods unavailable to Hope-Taylor for the first time and reveal  new insights: a brand-new craftworking structure with a really wonderful chronological sequence for part of the site. Most recently, in 2023, we reconnected with the Great Enclosure and began to reinterpret the outer ditch sequence, re-dating it to the late Iron Age and by implication possibly reinterpreting it as a major Late Iron Age enclosure filling in a late prehistoric gap. 

Gefrin Trust: What’s been your favourite aspect of the Festival of Archaeology?

Sarah: This site is for me evocative in terms of its location, its impact, the story that we see in Bede about Edwin, and the development of the royal complex. But for many years, I’ve been terribly sad that most people park up and stop on the road and just look over the wall and are not tempted to come into the field. So, the absolute best thing in the last couple of days is seeing people in the field, walking around the site and wanting to learn about it. Working with ACLE, the re-enactor group, this weekend has also brought life to the site and given visitors a sense of what a great encampment and assembly might have looked like here. People have been feeding back that they’ve learnt about the site and early medieval palace at Yeavering this weekend for the very first time.

Gefrin Trust: What’s your favourite season out here and why?

Sarah: I’ve worked out at Yeavering at all points of the year. Some of the early geophysics we were doing early on—resistivity, for example—works incredibly well in the coldest parts of the year when there’s a lot of snow and ice on the ground, but it’s absolutely perishing to conduct geophysics here in those months! In deep winter, the sun barely even crests Yeavering Bell and the location is really cold and virtually unlit during the short days of December and January. 

In comparison, being out here in the summer months—especially while excavating—gives you a powerful sense of why people came to this site and why it was seasonally-important, at least for major events and gatherings. The long and light days of the summer months change the entire arena and landscape. One can see it as a place of gathering and celebration from Easter through to summer—a natural place perhaps keyed into the seasonal movements of people and animals for millennia, rather than just centuries and a place where people naturally gathered for periods of time, for craftworking, for ceremonies, for assembly, and—as in the 7th century—for major royal and ritual ceremonial events.

Gefrin Trust: And that’s something we’re carrying on today, isn’t it! Thank you, Sarah. See you out on site later this month.

Professor Sarah Semple and her team will be returning to Yeavering from 26 August to 18 September 2025. Visitors are welcome to come to site for free tours each day at 3pm.