A 1,000-year-old logboat on dsiplay in Wakefield Library
By Mike Berriman
A 1,000-year-old Viking logboat has gone on display in Wakefield – the city where it was discovered – for the first time.
It was discovered in 1838 by canal workers who were building the Stanley Ferry Aqueduct on the River Calder, six feet below the bed of the river.
The boat was in York but has now moved to Wakefield Library.
It is Britain’s only known Anglo-Scandinavian boat to have survived from the time when Anglo Saxon and Viking rulers where jostling to control England.
It is called a logboat or a dugboat because it was hollowed out of a tree trunk. It measures about six metres but its original length is not known because the end is missing.
Admission to the library is free.