Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery

Snape Ship Burial

Mound 4, one of the cemetery's six tumuli, as of 2012.
Location within Suffolk
Established	6th century CE
Location	Snape Common, Suffolk
Coordinates	52°10′13″N 1°30′02″E / 52.1703°N 1.5006°E / 52.1703; 1.5006
Type	Ship burial

The Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery is a place of burial dated to the 6th century CE located on Snape Common, near to the town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, Eastern England. Dating to the early part of the Anglo-Saxon Era of English history, it contains a variety of different forms of burial, with inhumation and cremation burials being found in roughly equal proportions. The site is also known for the inclusion of a high status ship burial. A number of these burials were included within burial mounds.

The first recorded excavation of the site was conducted by antiquarians in 1827, with a later, more thorough investigation taking place in 1862 under the control of landowner Septimus Davidson. Artefacts from the earliest excavations soon disappeared, although important finds uncovered from the 1862 excavation included a glass claw beaker and the Snape Ring, now housed in The British Museum, London.

During the 20th century, the heathland that the cemetery was on was given over to farmland, with a road and house being constructed atop the site. Today, the burial mounds themselves are not accessible to the public, although the artefacts uncovered by the excavation are on display at the Aldeburgh Moot Hall Museum in the nearby coastal town of Aldeburgh.

The Snape Anglo-Saxon cemetery is located in the north-east corner of the modern parish of Snape, approximately 550 metres from the parish boundary with Friston. Although several modern houses stand on or near to the cemetery site, the main settlement at Snape village is located 1.5 kilometres away, with the village of Friston slightly nearer, at 1.25 kilometres away. The site is situated 2.5 kilometres north of the River Alde and 7 kilometres west of the coastal town of Aldeburgh and the North Sea. The cemetery is 17 kilometres north-east of the more famous Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo.