Was This Camelot?

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.

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.

. . . Arture much resortid to Camalat"