Gina seemed to sense it too. ‘Good. Right. Would you like to hold it for me?’ she asked Maude. ‘And when we’re done, I’ll show you some other finds from the yard.’

*

Leaving Mrs Agar to her card index, they followed Gina back out to the public part of the museum, into the section dealing with the abbey.

‘So,’ Gina said, leading the way to a cabinet set against the wall, ‘are you ready for the boring history bit?’

Maude nodded.

‘Right. Well. Short version. The abbey we see today is medieval—’

‘Gothic,’ said Maude, surprising Nell. ‘We went round it the other day, didn’t we?’

‘We did,’ said Nell, ‘but I didn’t think you were paying attention.’

Maude rolled her eyes. ‘More attention than you and Dad,’ she said.

Gina smiled. ‘Well, you are correct, Maude. But the site itself is much older than that, and once housed an earlier community, and – probably – an earlier abbey.’

‘When?’ asked Maude.

‘Seventh century, or thereabouts, making it an Anglian community. And what we have here,’ Gina continued, gesturing towards the cabinet, ‘is a plan of that community. It’s a bit hard to understand because we’ve superimposed a plan of the medieval abbey, but if you think of it being like a little village, with a church, and accommodations for the nuns and monks, and a farm, and a graveyard – they were probably quite self-sufficient.’

Nell leant in, but the map made little sense to her, blotches of grey squashed up against each other, the outline of the abbey dominating.

‘And there was a wall, or a fence,’ said Gina, ‘or some kind of a boundary, at least. And the bit that concerns us ran parallel with the cliff edge, along here’ – she pointed – ‘above the yards on our street.’

‘Above Bishops Yard?’ Maude asked uncertainly.

‘That’s right,’ said Gina. ‘We’re here. See?’ She pointed to the map. ‘And inside the boundary, we have the abbey, the community, and outside the boundary there’s a midden. A rubbish dump. And over the years, as the rubbish piles up and the cliff erodes . . .’

‘It falls down into the yards?’ Nell said.

‘Our yard?’ said Maude.

‘That’s the theory, more or less.’ Gina moved along to the next cabinet. ‘Anyway, this is what they found, we think.’

‘You think?’ Nell asked.

‘They weren’t brilliant at recording how and where finds were made back then. These pieces all come from the same collector and were certainly discovered at more or less the same time, probably in the drying ground behind Elder House.’