Explorations in Arthurian
History
The Importance of Geography
Part 4: Cadbury
It has been put forward that
Camelot
as the romance authors would have us fancy it did not exist, at least
not for Arthur. Where to look for Camelot, then? Geoffrey
of Monmouth says Arthur
held court at Caerleon.
Was this Camelot? It very well might have been, at least in
Geoffrey's mind. But the historian is concerned with facts. It is a
fact that the term Camelot was not mentioned until after Geoffrey had
written his "history." Technically, Geoffrey's Arthur's Caerleon can
never be Arthur's Camelot. History is defined by hairs split
thinner.
Yet, for our purposes,
such technicalities need not slow us down. Camelot as
defined in the popular Arthurian legends cannot be found
except in the imaginations of the authors. But two giants in
the field of history and archaeology believe they have found
the historical precedent for Camelot. It is at
Cadbury.
South Cadbury, to be
exact. This place contains a hill-fort, which in the 5th and
6th centuries was a castle. This
painting shows an
assault on a castle. Notice how small the castle is. The
perception that a castle has to be massive is based on our
perception of the medieval castles, which were massive, and
the perpetuation of this ideal by the authors of the
romances, who lived in the medieval period. A common theme
throughout these pages is the idea that the Arthurian story
can and is shaped to the times of the authors of the
stories. In the Welsh tales, he is a Welsh hero. In
Nennius,
he is a British hero fighting against the Saxons. In
Geoffrey, he is a medival warrior who holds in a court and
accepts homage from knights. In Malory,
he is a later medieval king who ... You see the
point.
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Anyway, back to Cadbury. It was a
hill-fort that was defended by earthwork ramparts and ditches and
fortified as early as the first century B.C. In Roman times, it was
the stronghold of one Arviragus, who held out for quite some time
before being driven out by the Roman army. The Romans left, for all
intents and purposes, in 410. Arthur is said to have lived not too
long after. For him to have refortified Cadbury, once home to
Arviragus, would serve two purposes:
- It would have already been a
stronghold, proving its adaptability.
- It would fire dedication to
the British cause against the Saxons.
A woman walking a dog in the 1950s
stumbled on some flints and pottery shards similar to those found at
Tintagel in the 1930s. These have been dated to the mid-to-late 5th
century; they were brought from the Eastern Mediterranean region,
suggesting a wealthy household as their acquirer.
Excavations in the late 1960s
unearthed a large stone-and-timber fortification, the largest of its
kind on the entire island. This fortification also has a gatehouse.
These two structures suggest a massive undertaking requiring a large
amount of supplies and manpower, something only a powerful leader (or
one who had influential backers) could have undertaken. It should be
noted here that other similar fortifications have been found
throughout England, Wales, and Scotland but that the one at Cadbury
is unique in its stone-and-timber combination and its
size.
The Cadbury site has around it
several references to the King of the Britons:
- A path leading to the top goes
by Arthur's Well.
- The plateau at the top is
Arthur's Palace.
- A path running toward
Glastonbury is Arthur's Lane.
This is by no means definitive
proof. Scotland has four separate sites named Arthur's Seat. As has
been mentioned previously Tintagel has several Arthurian sites as
well. The Cadbury references reinforce the idea that the site had an
Arthurian presence.
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Lastly we come to the
strange case of John Leland. Sent by King Henry VIII on a
tour of the country, Leland wrote this about
Cadbury:
"At the very south end of
the church of South-Cadbyri standeth Camallate, sometime a
famous town or castle ... The people can tell nothing here
but that they have heard say Arthur much resorted to
Camalat." Notice that Leland spelled Camelot with an a at
the end. Now, the dialect at that time allowed for the
pronunciation of that syllable like the a in father.
Spelling Camalat as we would sound it out gives you
Camelot.
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Was Cadbury Camelot? Not in the
traditional sense. Was it Arthur's stronghold? Alcock and Ashe
certainly think so. It doesn't hurt that the River Cam runs nearby.
Some have speculated that this river gave its name to the Battle of
Camlann,
Arthur's final battle, after which, Geoffrey and the legends say,
Arthur was spirited away to the Isle of Avalon.
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