Click Map For More Detail KeySources: Malory, Contents, Vol. 1 Malory, Contents, Vol. 2 Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur Geoffrey of Monmouth    (HKOB, Book VIII, Chapter XIX) Geoffrey of Monmouth    (HKOB, Book XI, Chapter II) J. Armitage Robinson    (2 Glastonbury Legends, 1926) Gerald of Wales    (Arthur's Grave, 1193) KeyWords: King Arthur Tintagel Castle Geoffrey of Monmouth "History of the Kings of Britain" Ygerna Gorlois Uther Pendragon Merlin Sir Thomas Malory Alfred Lord Tennyson Robert, Duke of Gloucester Charlemagne C.A. Ralegh Radford Chris Morris Arthur's Stone Dr Geoffrey Wainwright Cadbury Castle Chretien de Troyes Geoffrey Ashe Camelot Research Committee John Leland Prof. Leslie Alcock Glastonbury Isle of Avalon Guenevere King Melwas Phillip Rahtz Gerald of Wales Lancelot William of Malmesbury William Camden Joseph of Arimathea Holy Thorn Holy Grail Robert de Boron Chalice Hill Old Church Dissolution Henry VIII Thomas Cromwell Richard Whiting Avalonians

King Arthur is a most elusive figure. His name is a household word. His prowess in battle is the stuff of legend. The symbols associated with him are as powerful today as they've ever been. The people who surrounded him are among the best-known characters in all literature. But, we really don't know much about the man, himself. The flesh and blood human being behind the legend lacks substance.

We have no eye-witness accounts of the details of his reign, and few reliable sources which tell us about the times in which he is said to have lived. Most of what we think we know turns out to be nothing more than hints and suggestions, wisps and shadows, and as a result, we have to settle for making educated guesses about the timing and placement of the events in his life.

Fortunately though, in the absence of fact, legend is usually able to fill in the blanks for us and, in Arthur's case, it has done so remarkably well. But, much of the Arthurian legend is comprised of fanciful tales of mythical lands populated with fictitious characters and improbable animals that never had any existence outside the stories.

This article discusses 3 important locations where the Arthurian story came to earth in actual places and left physical evidence that is still there for you to see, today.

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Tintagel Castle
As already stated, facts are scarce concerning Arthur's life, but regarding the question, 'where was Arthur born,' legend fills the factual breach by telling us about that and thoughfully supplies us with the details of his conception, as well. The story is told to us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who lived in the first half of the twelfth century. His tale goes something like this:

At an Easter feast in London, Ygerna, the ravishing wife of Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall, attracted the unwanted attentions of Uther Pendragon, the high king, at that time. Geoffrey tells us that Uther ordered golden goblets of wine for her and engaged her in "sprightly conversation" Gorlois, realized the potential for danger in all this, wisely departed the feast, along with his wife, and returned to his own castle at Tintagel, on the wild, rocky seacoast of north Cornwall. After a week had passed, still flushed with unfulfilled desire for the maddeningly beautiful Ygerna and angry at Gorlois' premature departure without his permission, King Uther marshaled his own forces and pursued Gorlois for the purpose of ravaging his lands and gaining satisfaction for the insult.

Gorlois recieved word of Uther's pursuit, and after making sure of his wife's safety in Tintagel Castle, went out to lead his men in the coming battle against the hormone-driven high king. Merlin, the shadowy character, who would later use his special abilities as adviser, seer and magician in the service of Arthur, entered the picture, here, and by means of a small deception, made it possible for Arthur to be born.

In an impressive demonstration of his magical powers, Merlin transforms Uther's appearance into an exact duplicate of Gorlois, so that while the real Gorlois was out in the trenches being hacked away at by Uther's men, Uther walked past the guards without being questioned, directly into Tintagel Castle for a tryst with the object of his inflamed passions, Ygerna. Merlin's transformation was so convincing that Ygerna believed Uther to be Gorlois, and, since the danger had apparently been averted, she gave herself to him, without reservation.

The rest, as they say, is history. Gorlois found himself unequal to the challenge of Uther's armies, and passed away without the knowledge that his wife, the spectacular Ygerna, would, in nine short months, give birth to the greatest legend of the western world. This part of Geoffrey's story is completed by Uther and Ygerna living happily ever after, as husband and wife.

Geoffrey is the first writer in history to make a connection between Arthur and Tintagel, but definitely not the last. Sir Thomas Malory in "The Death of Arthur" had Arthur born in the castle, there. In Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," Arthur washed ashore, there, and was pulled out of the water by Merlin. Other writers have adopted Tintagel, as well. Since everyone has to be born someplace, Tintagel is as good a spot as any other. But what prompted Geoffrey of Monmouth to select it as Arthur's birthplace and why did the other writers follow suit? Is it reliable history or pure literary license? Is Geoffrey's story true in every last detail -- of course, it is not -- but could it have been built around an original kernel of truth? Let's see where the story might have come from, in the first place.

Almost 900 years ago, Geoffrey of Monmouth distinguished himself for all time to come by writing what he called the "History of the Kings of Britain." Geoffrey, himself, was either Welsh or Breton by birth, and his sympathies were definitely with the remnant of the Celtic peoples living in Britain. To his mind, these people had sufferred centuries of shame and deprivation at the hands of first, the Anglo-Saxons, and now, the Normans. Geoffrey's purpose was to write a complete history of Britain from their viewpoint, which would instill a sense of pride, long since lost, in the descendents of the British peoples who were the true and rightful owners of the land.

The "History of the Kings of Britain" was an ambitious work, written about 1136, which purported to tell the story of Britain's history from its origins around 1100 BC, when it was populated by a race of giants and was called Albion, until the ending of the times of the Britons and the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon age, around 650 AD.

Geoffrey's patron was Robert, Duke of Gloucester, the illegitimate, but influential son of Henry I, and it was to him that Geoffrey dedicated his work. Likely, there were bigger fish on Geoffrey's hook than the mere elevation of the spirits of the British people. He was imaginative and clever, and it must have occurred to him that he could, in one fell swoop, assuage the feelings of his own people and, at the same time cater to the new conquerors of his land. He could not throw them out, but he could further his own cause by giving them something they couldn't get anywhere else - legitimacy by means of the creation of an English rival to the French legend of Charlemagne, Arthur.

Click Here for a more complete biography of Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Geoffrey's history was well received and was widely accepted as the definitive history of Britain for almost 600 years before it was finally discredited as fabrication and fantasy by the critical scholarship of a later time. In modern terms, it could be called a best-seller, but the chief impact of the history was not at the cash register. By carefully embellishing existing traditions and sources, some of which may now be lost to us, Geoffrey gave Arthur a pedigree, a birthplace, a sword, a wife, a court and military campaigns. He gave the new rulers of England the symbolic tool they needed to elevate their stature to the level of the kings of France, and beyond. Geoffrey gave them an Arthur who was a real emperor who ruled not only over England, but Ireland, Iceland, Scandinavia, parts of Gaul, and even challenged Rome, itself.

Again, we ask the question, why Tintagel? If Geoffrey of Monmouth was only indulging himself in flights of fancy, he could have chosen a much better place; a place that isn't so remote and outside of the mainstream of power. Did Geoffrey drop the ball, here? If believability was one of his goals, then choosing Tintagel was a mistake. But, there is one other possibility, though, that might help us along in our investigation. What if Geoffrey was following a much older tradition that connected Arthur with Tintagel?

As far as we know, he was the first to link the man with the place, but he might have used an earlier source that did. There could have been a tradition, a bardic tale, a document or a book that might be lost to us, that was known to Geoffrey? What we do know is that there is a ruined castle, here. It sits impressively high above the Atlantic, connected to the mainland only by a slippery, narrow bridge where the wind howls constantly. In terms of atmosphere and drama, the location definitely qualifies as Arthurian. The easy thing would be for us to say, "See, there's the proof that Geoffrey knew what he was talking about! He wrote of a castle on this site and, sure enough, there it is! He wasn't following any ancient traditions, he was only writing about a castle he already knew of. What's so special about that?"

But, remember, Geoffrey wrote his history in the mid-1130's and no castle was even began on this site until, at least, the 1140's. The castle you see, here, in ruin wasn't completed for another 100 years. So, it seems like we're back to square one. Where did Geoffrey get the idea from, then? Perhaps, we can look to archaeology for help.

There have been two major excavations of the sites in and around the existing castle. The first of these was conducted in the 1930's by Dr. C.A. Ralegh Radford.

The team found evidence of structures and pottery fragments of a type that Radford determined were consistent with a 5th century Celtic monastic community. Now, a monastery would hardly have been the most appropriate place for Uther and Ygerna to have had their big night together, so this finding seemed to throw a bucket of cold water on those who were hoping that Geoffrey was right. It was some consolation, at least, that there was something on the site in about the right time period. Maybe Geoffrey had heard about the monastery and, for the purpose of his story, called it a castle.

In the 1990's, a Scottish-based team from Glasgow University, led by Chris Morris, conducted a second major excavation which produced much different results, however. The original contention that a structure, dating from around the fifth century, stood on this site was supported, but it was the nature of that structure that was found to be different. The original building was not a monastery at all, as Radford had believed, but a castle, a fortified position, perhaps the stronghold of a powerful, dark-age chieftain. We begin to wonder if it might have belonged to Gorlois. Could it have been occupied by Arthur, himself?

Now, as we look back at Geoffrey's history, we wonder if maybe he did know something about Tintagel, that informed his writing. It would be unfair to say that he was just pulling material out of thin air, as some have said. and we should probably give him the benefit of the doubt. This is not to say that we should accept anything he says, uncritically, just that we shouldn't reject what he says, out of hand.

In July of 1998, a dramatic discovery by one of the archaeology team members made Geoffrey's identification of Tintagel with King Arthur look even better. During the last week of digging on the Eastern terraces of Tintagel Island, Kevin Brady, discovered a broken piece of Cornish slate, measuring 8 by 14 inches, which bore an inscription that included the name, "A-R-T-O-G-N-O-U" (N.B. pronounced: Arth-new), and which is now being called, "Arthur's Stone."

Team leader Morris has taken a skeptical attitude toward the find and doesn't attach any great importance to it. He believes that it does little more than prove, once and for all, that names similar to "Arthur" really were used in the "Arthurian" period. On the other hand, Dr Geoffrey Wainwright, chief archaeologist for English Heritage, stated enthusiastically, "Tintagel has presented us with evidence of a Prince of Cornwall, in the Dark Ages, living in a high-status domestic settlement at the time Arthur lived. It has given us the name of a person, Arthnou. Arthnou was here, that is his name on a piece of stone. It is a massive coincidence at the very least. This is where myth meets history. It's the find of a lifetime."

Fascinating as all this is, do Tintagel's connections with Arthur begin and end with the castle? From a distance, the town appears to be a normal seaside community of the kind that you can find anywhere. But make no mistake; Tintagel is a company town, in the truest sense of the term, and is the center of a local industry. The town's main function in life is catering to the thriving King Arthur trade; to wit, the King Arthur Hotel, the King Arthur Book Shop, the King Arthur Car Park, the King Arthur's Arms Pub, King Arthur's Cafe, King Arthur's Great Hall and Merlin's Pub, just to name a few. Each year, some 700,000 people come to Tintagel. Many are simply seeking the summer sun and the fresh breezes that blow in off the Atlantic Ocean, but many more are drawn by the exciting possibility of rubing elbows with a king.

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Cadbury Castle
After the account of Arthur's conception and birth, Geoffrey of Monmouth continues his story of the king's life, but makes no further mention of Tintagel Castle. We don't know if Arthur lived there, as a boy, or if he ever made it his headquarters after he became king. In the Geoffrey accounts, Arthur seems to have had a traveling court that isn't permanently fixed to any geographical point. The French romancer, Chretien de Troyes, enhances Geoffrey's story of Arthur by adding several important details. He gives Arthur's headquarters a name. He calls it Camelot, but he doesn't tell us where it might have been.

The leading candidate for the site of Arthur's Camelot is Cadbury Castle. In southeastern Somerset, just a few miles from the Dorset border, a tree-shrouded hill rises some 500 feet from the surrounding countryside. As you drive by on the nearby highway, the hill is noticeable, but hardly dominating. From visual clues alone, one would never guess that this hill might be famed Camelot, headquarters of the great King Arthur.

The medieval stories all evoke a picture of a wise and powerful King Arthur and his beautiful, magnificently-attired queen, Guinevere, riding forth from their fairytale castle with their colorful, emblazoned standards ripping in the breeze, escorted by valiant knights in full tournament regalia. It is from these stories, and from Hollywood's portrayals of them, that we get our ideas of what Arthur and his time was like.

Click Here for more about Cadbury Castle.

Attractive as this view might be, it has been "medievalized" by the storytellers so that their audiences could better relate to their tales. It doesn't fit the reality of the period that Arthur actually lived in, which was somewhere between the mid-fifth and the mid-sixth century. Things were quite different in the dark ages. The idealized, medieval castle, made entirely of stone with a barbican, a drawbridge, a moat and crenellated battlements was a thing of the far future, in Arthur's day. Defensive fortifications in the dark ages were usually constructed of timber, and in the Iron Age, the early Britons had made impressive fortifications out of earth. These earthworks, known as hillforts, were massive engineering projects that, in many cases, required years and a "cast of thousands" to complete. They had been in common use around 500 B.C. but were gradually abandoned with the rise of communities and the coming of the Romans.

Though this hillfort at Cadbury isn't what we usually think of as a castle, when we consider when Arthur flourished it is entirely possible that he might have used one of these earthen strongholds as his headquarters. Historians and archaeologists tell us that during this time, many hillforts were being re-furbished and put into use, again, as they had been centuries before the Romans came. The Saxon expansion of the mid to late 400's pushed many native Britons out of their urban dwellings and it made good sense for them to re-develop the hillforts for accommodation as well as for protection (photo at right shows Geoffrey Ashe, Secretary of the Camelot Research Committee who excavated the site in the 1960's, climbing the uppermost of four tiered ramparts. Note the fact that Mr. Ashe is well over 6 feet tall. Then, calculate the approximate trough-to-peak distance for just one of the defensive ramparts [± 40 feet]. Also, note that the inclination of the wall of the rampart is about 50 degrees. Then, imagine trying to fight your way up those ramparts against gravity and a fresh, committed defensive force, all the while loaded down with battle gear. It is easy to see why these defensive earthworks were so effective for so many centuries).

All across the country, these fastnesses were being reoccupied, but the hill at South Cadbury seems to be a special case. In the 1530's, John Leland, Henry VIII's chief antiquarian, said that local legend claimed that Arthur came to Cadbury Castle, often. In his 16th century English he wrote,

"The people can telle nothing ther but that they have hard say that Arture much resortid to Camalat."

According to Ashe, "the modern Cadbury story began almost 50 years ago. On top of the hill is a great, grassy enclosure inside the ramparts (about 18 acres all together) and, at that time, the owner of the hill plowed up the summit area for crops. The soil there is very shallow so the plow turned over the soil almost down to the bedrock. A local amateur archaeologist, a Mrs. Harfield, used to go up that hill to walk her dog. The dog's name was Caesar and while Caesar trotted around, Mrs. Harfield walked up and down the plow furrows poking around in the plowed soil with the ferrule of her umbrella. This is the most elementary form of archaeology and she found little fragments of pottery, and showed them to Dr. Raleigh Radford (of Tintagel fame, ed.), one of the great experts on the Arthurian period.

"Radford had worked at Tintagel some years before and recognized, in the Cadbury pottery, a certain similarity to the kind he had found at Tintagel. The pottery wasn't made in Britain and was a rather fancy sort of imported stuff from the Eastern Mediterranean, a very long way off and very expensive to import. It was used for luxury goods, wine and expensive oils. and what was most important of all, it could be dated pretty close to the time Arthur was supposed to have flourished.

"This sort of earthenware has been found in other places in Britain, but finding it implies something about the place where you find it. It suggests that somewhere closeby there must have been a wealthy household, the household of a prince or king who had the power, wealth and influence to import this expensive stuff and these kinds of luxury goods. Now, a finding like this puts Cadbury in quite a new light.

"It was a long time before any further work was done. In the 1960's the Camelot Research Committee was formed, of which I was Secretary and Leslie Alcock, now Professor Alcock (now deceased, ed.), was The Director of Excavations. Between 1966-70 Cadbury Castle was excavated and we found some very interesting things. The most important thing was that the hill had been vacant during the Roman period because the Romans, evidently, moved the people out so that they couldn't use it in a rebellion.

"After the Romans left Britain, it had been reoccupied at about the time of Arthur, the late 5th century, and had been re-fortified on an enormous scale. When we cut down through the top rampart, we found a stone wall 16 feet thick running all the way around the top of the hill for something like three quarters of a mile. The wall had been bound with timber beams; they had been rotted away but you could see where they were. There had been some sort of breast-work platform, possibly watch towers and there was a gatehouse.

"The whole hillfort had been refortified about Arthur's time, evidently by a leader of importance and high authority, as it would have required a great deal of wealth and very great resources of manpower to accomplish that refortification. Since that time, it has become even more interesting because many more of these hill forts have been excavated, but there is no other case in England or Wales of an elaborate fortification."

What we have at Cadbury is hard evidence for a great leader with great resources, at just about the right time, in the very part of the country that is traditionally associated with King Arthur. Can we do any better? Can we home in on a man actually called Arthur, or are we merely left with a pile of inconclusive evidence for some other nameless, great leader?

Click Here for more about Arthur, King of the Britons

Whatever the case, no petty chieftain could have done this; someone of special significance had to be behind it. When we ask the obvious question,"who did do it?," we naturally want to respond, "King Arthur." But, was he really the one who refortified Cadbury Castle? We don't know for sure, but from all the evidence, it's possible that he could have been. And saying that he "could have been here" may be as close as we can ever get to catching the elusive King Arthur.

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Glastonbury
King Arthur's final place of rest, Geoffrey tells us, was the mythical Isle of Avalon. Avalon is another of those Arthurian locales that has no geographic location, but which has come to be associated with a real place, in this case Glastonbury.

Glastonbury is a town of about 8,000 people situated in the county of Somerset in England's storied West Country. Because of its important medieval abbey and its association with some of Britain's best-known myths and legends, Glastonbury has attracted public attention and scholarly interest far out of proportion to its physical size, natural beauty or economic importance. Its most defining physical feature is a group of four hills around which the town has grown up and which have played such an important part in it's history.

The most prominent of the four hills, known thereabouts simply as "the Tor," is a strange, whalebacked mound, easily seen from miles away looming over the low, surrounding landscape. On its slopes, some are able to perceive a maze of pathways that are believed to have had ritual significance to the early inhabitants of this place. The Tor is capped by a solitary stone tower which gives the Tor an ominous, gothic appearance. The tower is all that now remains of the fourteenth century chapel of St. Michael. In the Middle Ages, dedications to the Archangel Michael were usually made for the purpose of protection from or purification of demonic spirits and influences. This seems most appropriate, since the Tor was traditionally believed to be the entrance to the Celtic underworld of Annwn.

Geoffrey Ashe, Arthurian scholar and local resident says, "the Glastonbury landscape is weird. Yet, the essence of its weirdness is hard to catch. The enchantments of mist and sunset transform it from one day to another, and its final secret remains elusive."

The landscape, though, is not the only elusive secret that Glastonbury harbors, as there are still numerous elements of ancient magic and mystery in evidence, today. Of all the places traditionally having associations with King Arthur, none can equal Glastonbury in the profusion or persistence of its claims. Here, the strange landscape is overlaid with an even stranger history and, through the centuries, Glastonbury has become the gravitational center of the entire Arthurian universe.

Let's look at some of these traditional associations with King Arthur:

Perhaps the Arthurian legend with most substance is the claim by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey that Arthur's burial place was discovered on the grounds of their monastery in 1190. Some 50 years before, Geoffrey of Monmouth said in his "History of the Kings of Britain," that Arthur was taken to the Isle of Avalon for the healing of the wounds he received in his final battle against the traitor, Mordred. He never connected Avalon and Glastonbury, leaving it as a geographically unspecified place, but Gerald of Wales, in 1193, did. Gerald tells us that the Glastonbury monks, acting on a suggestion from King Henry II, began digging between two pyramids in the Abbey's cemetary. Sixteen feet beneath the ground, they found a hollowed-out log coffin containing the remains of two people. Attached to the underside of a great stone slab covering the coffin, they found an inscribed cross that read, "Here lies buried the famous King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife in the Isle of Avalon."

A few years before this discovery, in 1184, Glastonbury Abbey had been almost completely destroyed by a tragic fire, but with the blessing and support of the King Henry, who was an ardent benefactor of the abbey, the reconstruction began almost immediately. Henry died soon after in 1189 and the interests of the new king, Richard I, ran toward war rather that ecclesiastical re-construction projects. Over the centuries, there have been howls of protest and charges of "hoax" that continue, unabated, today, saying that the monks of Glastonbury manufactured the "evidence" of the discovery of Arthur's grave in order to increase pilgrim traffic and raise money for the rebuilding of their abbey.

Whatever the ultimate truth about the identity of the occupants of the grave that was found, the inscribed cross really did exist; it was mentioned by John Leland, a 16th century antiquarian in the service of Henry VIII, and it was illustrated by William Camden for the 1607 edition of his book, "British History Club." It was last known to be in the possession of one Wiliam Hughes, a Chancellor of nearby Wells Cathedral, in the early 18th century. Since then, there have been several unsubstantiated "sightings" of the cross by people claiming to have found it, but no one has come forward with proof. Geoffrey Ashe concludes, "In default of evidence, I fear we must set aside the cross as an able forgery and the story of finding it as a bit of embroidery." But who knows? Maybe the cross does still exist and, if it were to be found someday, would play an important part in unlocking the mystery that surrounds the discovery of King Arthur's grave.

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Click Here for more on King Arthur's Burial Cross.    Click Here to read about a Cross hoax in 1981.

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Apart from its direct Arthurian connections, legend tells us that Glastonbury is the cradle of British Christianity, the place where Joseph of Arimathea first made landfall in England and where he is said to have established his community of believers. According to the story first told by a 9th century chronicler, Freculphus, and given credibility by the careful medieval historian, William of Malmesbury, Joseph and his party of 12 missionaries, sent from Gaul by St. Philip to evangelize Britain, landed upon nearby Wearyall Hill and upon debarking, Joseph is said to have thrust his wooden staff into the ground. From it grew the "Holy Thorn," a species of hawthorne indigenous to Syria and Palestine, whose shoots still thrive, today (arrow in image at right indicates thorn tree on side of Wearyall Hill). The thorn is said to bloom on or around Christmas.