Bronze Age log boat found in Severn mud is Britain’s oldest complete vessel, say Bristol archaeologists

A seven-metre oak boat carved from a single trunk about 3,400 years ago has been lifted from the mud of the Severn estuary, the University of Bristol said on Tuesday, making it the oldest complete vessel ever found in Britain and one of the best preserved in Europe.

The log boat was spotted in August by a wildfowler walking the foreshore near Lydney in Gloucestershire after a channel shifted during the summer’s low river levels, exposing a dark curved shape that he initially took for a fallen tree. Radiocarbon dating of a sample taken in September puts the felling of the oak between 1420 and 1380BC, in the middle Bronze Age.

Inside the hull, archaeologists found a shaped ash paddle, two wooden pegs, and a layer of charred hazelnut shells that may be the remains of a meal. The boat’s stern is intact and bears a carved transom slot, a feature previously known in Britain only from the much later Iron Age. The team believes it was used for crossing the estuary and fishing, rather than for sea voyages.

“Most prehistoric boats in this country survive as a plank or a fragment,” said Dr Rowan Castlemaine, who led the excavation. “This one has its stern, its paddle, and what may be the crumbs from its last outing. It is as if someone tied it up, walked away, and the river sealed it in.”

The recovery was carried out over two low tides on 27 and 28 September, with the boat encased in foam and fibreglass before being winched on to a sledge and dragged 400 metres across the mud by a team of 30, including volunteers from the Severn Estuary Levels Research Committee. It is now in a tank of fresh water at the York Archaeological Trust’s conservation laboratory, where it will be impregnated with polyethylene glycol over about four years.

The Severn’s tides, the second highest in the world, have both preserved and threatened the site. Rapid erosion of the estuary’s peat beds, accelerated by sea level rise and stronger winter storms, has exposed dozens of prehistoric footprints and fish traps in the past decade, most of which were lost within a few tides.

The finder, Terry Kemble, 63, from Blakeney, said he had walked the stretch for 40 years. “I thought it was a tree, and then I saw the edge was too neat,” he said. “I have found old bottles and bits of boat before. Nothing like this. My wife says I am not allowed to retire now.”

The boat will go on display at the Dean Heritage Centre in Soudley once conservation is complete, under an agreement with the Crown Estate, which owns the foreshore. Historic England has designated the find site as a scheduled monument to deter unlicensed digging.