Langdon Bay, Moor Sands & the Erme Estuary Prehistoric Wreck Sites

English Heritage MRTM summaries. 2002/2003

The two oldest sites designated as historic wrecks under the Protection of Wrecks Act (1973) are the sites at Langdon Bay (designated on 26th May 1978) and Moor Sands (designated on 8th March 1978). Fieldwork on both sites was undertaken in the late 1970's and early 1980's under the direction of the National Maritime Museum, initially by the late Keith Muckelroy and then his successor, Martin Dean and in both cases in conjunction with Stuart Needham of British Museum. Work on both sites has been dormant since these dates but in 2003 English Heritage commission Bournemouth University to, in conjunction with The British Museum and St Andrews University, undertake the publication of the work on both sites. Current chronologies would place the material from both sites at around the thirteenth century BC, late in the Middle Bronze Age, thus making the sites two of the earliest known potential shipwreck sites in the world.

The Langdon Bay site was found by members of Dover Sub-Aqua Club in 1974 in 6-10m of water in an exposed location, 500m to the seaward of the base of the famous white cliffs to the east of Dover Harbour. The site consists of a scatter of finds on a seabed that consists of high flat chalk bedrock with boulders and silty sand in hollows between. To date a total of 360 finds are been recovered from the site, all of bronze and comprising tools, weapons, ornaments and miscellaneous pieces.  A high proportion of these finds are of continental forms with potentially widespread origins between Brittany and the Lower Rhine region. The bronzes have suffered varied degrees of abrasion as a result of their periodic exposure on the seabed during three millennia, but a good proportion are still identifiable to specific types. There is also clear evidence that many pieces were already bent and broken up in antiquity. Because of this damage and their likely continental origins, it has been hypothesised that the assemblage forms a cargo of scrap metal being imported into the Britain for recasting.

The Moor Sands site was found by Philip Baker, an instructor on a Youth Hostel Association organised diving school, in 1977 in 4-8m of water just offshore from the small sandy beach called Moor Sands, to the west of Gammon Head, approximately 2 ½ miles south east of the entrance to Salcombe Harbour in South Devon. The site consists of a scatter of finds on a seabed that consists of rock gullies with sand infill descending to sand and gravel seabed offshore. Systematic search and survey of 6.5 ha of seabed recovered a total of nine finds have been recovered from the site, all bronze consisting of a remarkably well preserved and complete sword (the first find), a well preserved sword hilt, four eroded blades, a sword handle and two palstaves, one reasonably well preserved and the other eroded. The eroded blades show no diagnostic features but the well preserved sword is unparalleled in the Britain or Ireland but has parallels with assemblages from Middle Bronze Age, c. 1300 BC, on the continent, particularly with material in the Seine basin of northern France. The palstaves are of a type very common in Brittany of which small numbers occur in southern England, thought to be imports.

This page was published on 12/05/2004