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| Cadbury Castle |
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'. . . Arture much resortid to Camalat"
So said John Leland in 1542 about Cadbury Castle, on the south edge of the little village of South Cadbury. Without the benefit of modern technology and archaeological techniques, Leland recounted local tradition that the mammoth hillfort was connected to the legendary King Arthur. When the Camelot Research Committee was formed in 1965 with famed archaeologist Leslie Alcock at its head, no one knew exactly what they would find when they turned the earth and looked underneath. Did they find a sign saying, "Arthur slept here"? No. But what they did find did nothing to dispel the mythic associations and, indeed, enhanced the possibility that this was the historic Arthur's headquarters.
Despite the portrait painted by Geoffrey of Monmouth, any historical Arthur was a child of the Dark Ages rather than the High Middle Ages, that time when the Romans had withdrawn and the native Britons struggled to keep the Picts and Scots and then the Saxons from overrunning them. In a landscape of decaying villas and fractious tribes, a group of nobles did make an effort at some sort of umbrella government, a consolidated kingdom. Gildas, who wrote the only real history of the time, though that was not his intent, wrote of some of these efforts. Other sources such as Sidonius Appollinaris wrote of a "riothamus" or "high king" of the Britons of high character. The chronicler Jordanes wrote, in 550, of this "Riotimus" coming to Gaul to support a Roman army. What little can be deduced from these bits and pieces is that there was a man, of strong personal character, who was solicited to bring his army to the aid of the Romans in Gaul.
What the excavations at Cadbury Castle proved was that the Iron Age hillfort had been substantially refortified and refurbished by a warlord of incredible wealth and resources at just the time (give or take a decade or two) that history, folklore, legend and literature place Arthur or someone like him. We have then a nexus at which point everything comes together, supporting an historical Arthur. My conclusion will be challenged, particularly by the Welsh school (who place Arthur much later and far further north), but it is a conclusion shared by many and not easily dismissed.
I try to apply objectivity to any research problem. Research is nothing more than an attempt to answer questions, and no source should be overlooked in that quest. If there were, truly, no Arthur, then I would pose these questions to historian David Dumville, archaeologist Nowell Myres and other skeptics: 1) Who was the Arthur mentioned in the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae? For surely Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wasn't even alive when those documents were compiled, didn't create him. 2) From whence did the local belief in South Cadbury of a connection between the hillfort and Arthur spring? Not from Geoffrey, who placed Arthur's headquarters at Winchester. Until they answer these questions, their dismissal of the historicity of Arthur smacks of research bias. I'm not trying to be dismissive of their opinions, merely asking for a bit objectivity.
A visit to Cadbury Castle does nothing to dispel the traditions. It is a monumental hillfort, the summit enclosing some 18 acres of land. Recently, Geoffrey Ashe, an enormously popular author and himself the secretary of the Camelot Research Committee, told me of some visitors to the excavations back in the late 1960s. "They asked how far down they would have to dig to find the castle," he remembered with a smile. In July of 2008, I had a similar experience when visiting the fort. A German couple asked, quite innocently, where the castle had gone. The sheer size and scale of the site make those assumptions not that wild or uninformed. But that is because of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the later romancers, who pulled Arthur 600 years into the future and gave him a castle with thick stone walls and amazing stone turrets. Arthur's actual headquarters would have been a timber hall (and remains of one were found on the summit at Cadbury) and the defenses would have been dry-stacked stone walls with timber ramparts and deep defensive ditches (Cadbury has about four such ditches and banks).
Because of Ashe, Alcock, and others, I chose to set my new series of Arthurian novels, primarily, at Cadbury Castle. Keeping in mind the reality of history rather than the imagination of the romanticists, here's a rather elementary tour of the hillfort at South Cadbury, the setting for my novel The Killing Way, scheduled for release in April 2009 from Tor/Forge.
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| The hillfort at South Cadbury |
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| Entering South Cadbury |
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| St. Thomas a' Beckett |
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As you trudge along the lane into South Cadbury and pass The Camelot Inn, one of the first landmarks to the right will be St. Thomas a' Beckett's Church. Ruins of Roman houses were found behind the church, which scholars have dated to the 2nd or 3rd centuries. Just past the church is the lane up to the hillfort, a steep, somewhat muddy path on the day I was there. But the path is fairly well cobbled and easily navigated these days, as long as you sidestep the piles of cow manure, leading into what was the northeast gate.
When you emerge into the enclosure on top of the hill, you are faced with the continuing incline. Though I had been there before, what amazed me on this visit was the sheer magnitude. Using aerial photographs and archaelogical sketches and drawings, I had imagined a town plan for my novels. But I immediately realized how I had underestimated the size of the site. Eighteen acres can hold far more town than I had visualized. And it is absolutely not a flat summit. The excavations of 1966 to 1970 did not include the northeast gate, so it is unclear how significant that particular entrance was in the hillfort complex. A cursory examination would make it appear that it was bigger than the gate in the eastern rampart but not nearly as large or formal as the southwest gate.
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| The Lane |
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| Inside the northeast gate |
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| The eastern rampart |
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| Visitors generally take one of two paths as they enter the northeast gate. Either they continue along the ancient hollow way that leads straight up to the summit or they turn left and climb the eastern rampart. In the days of the refurbishment, during the Dark Ages, it is possible that the timber defenses that topped the rampart were substantial enough to support a parapet for guards to walk, perhaps, the entire circuit. Now, it provides an excellent walking path to gain a good perspective of the site. All it takes is one look down the outside of the fort's defenses to see how nearly impossible it would have been to assault the position. The best that could be done is to surround the hillfort and lay siege. But a well existed just outside the northeast gate, still well within the defensive ditches, so water would have been plenty. Enough food stockpiled and a siege could last for weeks, even months.
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| Stones in the rampart |
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| Along the Eastern Rampart |
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The sheer scale of the enclosure at South Cadbury speaks volumes about the kind of man who would hold sway over it. Eighteen acres, with a majestic summit upon which a timber hall was constructed. A quarry, metal-working pits next to what appear to be Roman-style military buildings, hollow-ways that may represent internal lanes within the enclosure. The southwest entrance was large enough to accomodate a double gate with guard to each side, designed, it would appear, to defend against a military assault. Artists' conceptions based on the 1966-70 excavations indicate a massive, dry-stacked stone wall with a timber rampart built above that, possibly high enough and strong enough to hold a parapet for guards to walk the circuit around the entire fort.
The timber hall sited on the summit was comparable in size to those discovered at Castle Dore in Cornwall, traditional home of King Mark of the Tristan and Isolde legend, and other regional hillforts. Tristan, of course, did exist as attested to by his memorial stone still standing near Fowey. It is believed to have been moved there from close to Castle Dore.
But whoever refurbished Cadbury Castle between 450 AD and 500 AD was a man of great power and great resources. We know from St. Gildas, the priest who penned something of a history of the period, that the warlords of Britannia tried to establish a council to govern the island in the wake of the Roman departure about 410 AD. Geography tells us that Cadbury Castle would have been an excellent location for a regional power base. Local tradition linked Arthur to Cadbury Castle as early as 1542. Draw your own conclusions.
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| Metal-working Pits |
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| The Summit from the east |
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| The Southwest Gate |
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| And now only thistles stand guard over the banks and ditches of Arthur's Castle. |
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Links
A number of websites provide information relative to the Dark Ages, South Cadbury, and the southwest in general. As I discover more, I'll include them here.
http://www.britannia.com/history/h17.html --This link leads to an interview with historian Geoffrey Ashe and an article on Glastonbury by Mr. Ashe.
http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/ -- This is a site primarily about Glastonbury Tor, but it has information relative to Arthur and South Cadbury hillfort as well.
http://www.dot-domesday.me.uk/vortigern.htm -- This is an excellent overview of the history of Dark Ages England with additional links to articles providing more detailed coverage. A good introduction to the time and politics.
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