Although none of them had any training in excavation, they did so in a meticulous manner, starting with a pit in the centre of each mound and then digging outwards, all the time recording the position of artefacts, such as the ship rivets, in situ. There were nevertheless problems, such as when a spade shattered the rim of a buried urn. With the exception of Mr C, the excavators each wrote and published their own accounts of the excavation, which displayed a great deal of consistency with one another. Davidson's account was presented at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in January 1863, while Francis published two articles in The Field in January and March 1863, followed by a paper for the Archaeological Journal. Hele then devoted a chapter to the excavation in his 1870 book Notes and Jottings about Aldeburgh. Commenting on the site, Davidson noted that it contained either nine or ten mounds, five of which were described as "large". He excavated only three of the large mounds which were owned by him and which had come to be damaged by passing traffic. In two of these, he found no evidence of a grave, but in the third uncovered the remains of a ship burial, which he recorded in a level of detail unknown at the time. The current knowledge of this burial relies largely on Davidson's account from the time. The discovery of the ship burial was the first of its kind to have been discovered and recognised in England, although two years previously excavators at Sutton Hoo had dug through a boat burial without realising what it was. Although novel in Britain, such ship burials had already been uncovered and reported on by archaeologists working in Scandinavia. Enthused by the success of the dig, he decided to return to excavate at the cemetery the following year, putting in a trench twelve yards long which unearthed over forty vases and a few other finds. Subsequent finds: 1920–1985 In the 1920s, the cemetery site saw the construction of a house known as St. Margaret's, immediately north of the three mounds that Davidson had excavated. The tumuli themselves became a part of the house's garden, which was ringed with some newly planted pines. It has been claimed that various urns were discovered both in the construction of the house and when digging holes for the plantation of the