The bird-men stone from Burra, Shetland, in an area called Papil, is a cross-slab with bizarre mythical iconography that continues to elude clear explanation. The bird-men stone stands out as one of the most enigmatic examples among the roughly 350 carved stones attributed to the Picts and is described as “by far the most unusual.”

During the Romano-British period, religious observance was woven into domestic life, often centred on household shrines where local deities were integrated into the Roman pantheon. Literary references to English pagan worship exist, with altars and idols mentioned, yet such texts seldom provide locational detail reliably correlated with archaeological evidence.

In the Middle Iron Age there was a funerary tradition of human bodies being placed in a crouched position within pits, where the deceased were sometimes associated with grave goods; typically joints of meat, stone objects such as quern stones and pottery and objects associated with weaving, whether spindle whorls or loom weights.

The Sandbach Crosses are a pair of richly decorated stone monuments in Sandbach, Cheshire, often regarded as among the most significant surviving early medieval monuments. Originally among the tallest in England, the larger cross measures 16 feet 8 inches, while the smaller, more fragmentary, stands at 11 feet 11 inches.

In the early 1920s, two bronze crowns and a ceremonial head-dress were discovered on Cavenham Heath. Purchased by Nina Layard, they were described in the Antiquaries Journal in 1925. While their findspot is uncertain, the topographical description more closely resembles Mill Heath or the cemetery field than Cavenham Heath, there’s no doubting their splendour.

Two hundred yards away from the monastery at Eye in Suffolk, a labourer in a garden unearthed a bronze seal that belonged to the Bishop Æthelwald of Dommoc, which some believed to have been Dunwich. The monks of Eye owned the bishopric site of Dunwich until it was swallowed by the sea and Æthelwald held office there from 845 to 870 approximately.

In Gazeley’s All Saints Church, highly rare and unique wooden carvings survive in the chancel wagon-roof dated to around 1530 A.D. Hidden out of sight, too small and far too high to be seen from the ground, they escaped Henry VIII’s iconoclasts who rejected images or objects of veneration as forbidden in the Bible. It was only during the extensive refurbishments that many of the mythical beings, animals and objects were clearly photographed for the first time.

On Undley Common near Lakenheath, a gold bracteate, a type of thin gold pendant was discovered in a grave. Its design was based on Roman coins struck for Constantine I between 324 and 330 A.D. with the bracteate itself dated to 475 A.D. On its surface a runic inscription reads from right to left ᚷ‍ᚫᚷ‍ᚩᚷ‍ᚫ ᛗᚫᚷᚫ ᛗᛖᛞᚢ g͡æg͡og͡æ mægæ medu that has been described as what may be the earliest writing in the English language.

Inside the Church of St Mary’s at Troston, there are an unusually high number of graffiti inscriptions, a combination of decorative patterns, figurative drawings and crosses with the tower arch depicting inscriptions of birds, fishes and animals, including two depictions of a deer. More curious are the ritual protection symbols, the compass-drawn designs, and ‘apotropaic’ markings. They may have also emulated older solar symbols and thus repel darkness.