Monday 10 September 2007

1,000-YEAR-OLD VIKING LONGSHIP COULD BE BURIED UNDER PUB CAR PARK

Experts have discovered what they think may be one of Britain’s most important archaeological finds – a Viking longship buried under a pub car park in Merseyside.

The ship was located used a high-tech Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) device, which traced its outline under 2-3 metres of waterlogged clay below the car park of the Railway Inn in Meols, the Wirral.

Professor Stephen Harding of the University of Nottingham, who made the discovery, is now looking for funding to excavate the site, and believes that its shape and outline matches that of a 1,000-year-old Norse transport vessel.

The ship was first uncovered in 1938 by workmen who were knocking down the old Railway Inn to be rebuilt further away from the road. They found parts of a clinker-built ship but covered it up again to finish converting the site into a car park.

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