A pair of bulging grain sacks leaning against a banded barrel — the working larder of an Anglo-Saxon barracks. Period: Early Middle Ages, c. 600-900 CE.
Anglo-Saxon households fed their warband on stews of bread, salt pork and barley porridge. Stores were kept in the same hall as the troops slept: sacks of milled barley and rye, barrels of brined fish and root vegetables, all stacked in the corner closest to the kitchen end of the long-house. This piece fuses two sacks and one barrel as one mountable unit — readable as a working larder corner, not a museum display.
Painting tips
- Sacks: pale linen with a sepia wash and a tied rope at the neck.
- Barrel: warm oak with iron-band drybrush.
- Optional: a chalk-X mark on one sack for character.
Historical sources & further reading
- West Stow stores reconstructions
- Anglo-Saxon estate inventories
⚠ Small parts. Not suitable for children under 14.





