Maritime archaeological divers from Bournemouth University have retrieved two engraved grave slabs from England’s earliest-known shipwreck.
Heavy-duty lifting equipment was needed to raise the burial stones from the mid-13th-century Mortar Wreck, which lies at a depth of 7m in Dorset’s Studland Bay, on 4 June. The operation took around two hours.
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The large, well-preserved clinker ship from the reign of King Henry III was found in 2019, given the highest-level Protected status in 2022 and a report on Divernet that year showed the two unpolished grave slabs that had been discovered at the site.

One was carved with an early-13th-century-style wheel-headed cross, and was 1.5m long with a weight of 70kg.
The other stone bore a later splayed-arm cross, which had not previously been known to have been produced at the same time as the wheel-headed style. This slab was originally 2m long and weighed 200kg but was broken in two.


The stones are thought to have been intended for use as coffin-lids or crypt monuments for high-ranking clerics.
“The wreck went down in the height of the Purbeck stone industry and the grave slabs we have here were a very popular monument for bishops and archbishops across all the cathedrals and monasteries in England at the time,” said Bournemouth University maritime archaeologist Tom Cousins, who has been leading the project from the start.
He said that similar examples had been found in Westminster Abbey and Canterbury and Salisbury Cathedrals.


It was Cousins and his team who first dived what had been marked only as an obstruction in 2019, following a tip-off from local charter skipper Trevor Small.
A combination of low-oxygenated water, sand and stones had preserved one side of the hull, and analysis of the ship’s timbers has shown them to be Irish oak felled between 1242 and 1265. This type of timber was widely exported, so the ship was not necessarily Irish.
“Although Purbeck marble was quarried near Corfe Castle, there has always been a debate about how much work was done here and how much was done in London,” says Cousins.
“Now we know they were definitely carving them here, but they hadn’t been polished into the usual shiny finish at the time they sank, so there is still more we can learn.”
Also found on the wreck to date and recovered have been a large stew cauldron and a smaller one for heating water, along with cups, pottery and kitchen items.

Cousins' team is continuing to survey the Mortar Wreck and he hopes it will provide a training ground for the next generation of archaeologists at Bournemouth University.
“We’ve already started teaching our second-year students to dive and as they get into the third year we’re going to take them out to sea and teach them their first steps to becoming maritime archaeologists,” he says.
Once the grave slabs have been desalinated and conserved they will be displayed in a new Shipwreck Gallery at Poole Museum, which is due to reopen following renovation next year.
Only divers under Historic England licence are allowed to visit the wreck-site. Details of the Mortar Wreck discoveries are to be published soon in the journal Antiquity.
Also on Divernet: 750-year-old wreck found off Dorset – timbers and all, Diving brothers’ wreck find ‘biggest since Mary Rose’, Divers find tragic White Ship