King Arthur

by Christopher Hibbert

  The story of the discovery is related by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), a historian who visited the abbey soon afterward and met the abbot. Giraldus may be a reliable authority because he refused to accept much of the Arthurian legend and condemned Geoffrey of Monmouth for propagating the fancies that had appeared in the History of the Kings of Britain.

  According to Giraldus, the monks at Glastonbury were given an indication of where to search by Henry II, who had been told by “an ancient Welsh bard, a singer of the past, that they would find the body at least sixteen feet beneath the earth, not in a tomb of stone, but in a hollow oak.” It had been buried at such a depth “that it might not by any means be discovered by the Saxons, who occupied the island after his death, whom he had so often in his life defeated and almost utterly destroyed.”

  The monks roped off an area in the abbey grounds, erected a fence around it, and began to excavate. They had dug only a foot or two when a spade struck a slab of stone. Beneath the stone was a lead cross engraved with the Latin words:

  HIC IACET SEPULTUS INCLYTUS REX ARTHURUS CUM WEN-NEVERIA UXORE SUA SECUNDA IN INSULA AVALLONIA

  Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife in the Isle of Avalon

  Excavating further, the monks unearthed a coffin made from a hollow oak trunk; inside they found the bones of a tall man at one end and those of a woman at the other. The skull of the woman was encircled by “a yellow tress of hair still retaining its colour and its freshness.” But when a monk reached down to touch the hairs, they crumbled into dust.

  The bones of the man were recovered less clumsily, and as each one appeared, the monks marveled at their size. His shin bone, Giraldus recounts, “when placed against that of the tallest man in the place, and planted in the earth near his foot, reached, as the Abbot showed us, a good three inches above his knee. And the skull was so large and capacious as to be a portent or a prodigy, for the eye-socket was a good palm in width. Moreover, there were ten wounds or more, all of which were scarred over, save one larger than the rest, which had made a great hole.”

  Arthur and Guinevere had been found at last. Now Glastonbury Abbey could be sure of an ongoing stream of visitors and pilgrims bearing gifts. New buildings slowly replaced those destroyed in the fire; a church that eventually would be the largest in England took its splendid shape, although the sprawling ruins of the abbey still may be seen. And in 1278, when King Edward I and Queen Eleanor visited the abbey, the remains of Arthur and Guinevere were moved to a black marble tomb in the center of the choir and laid to rest. Two stone lions were placed at each end of the tomb, a statue of Arthur at the foot, and the lead cross found in the original tomb was placed above it.

  The tomb remained undisturbed until the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII proclaimed the dissolution of all Britain’s monasteries. The abbey’s lands passed into private hands, and the buildings fell into ruins. In time, both the shrine and the original site of Arthur’s grave were lost. In the eighteenth century, the lead cross, too, disappeared. The story of the monks’ discovery was portrayed as a medieval fraud.

  Certainly the lead cross did not date from the sixth century. A first-hand drawing made of it by a seventeenth-century historian shows a script of a much later date. In addition, the reference to Arthur as king indicates it was made long after his death at a time when his kingship had become part of the legend. It is impossible to be certain about the bones; they may have been those of an Iron Age man and woman, buried in a dugout canoe from the Glastonbury lake village after its destruction by the Belgae. The monks may have found them by chance while digging a grave, or they could have found them elsewhere and placed them in the spot most convenient for their discovery.

  In addition, the Abbot of Glastonbury and his monks were not alone in wanting to make the discovery of Arthur’s tomb. King Henry II was also interested, although he died before it was found. The people of Wales were in a state of rebellion. The legends of Arthur’s survival were known to all Welshmen: There was real danger that a rebel leader might arouse widespread support by declaring that he was Arthur risen again to lead them against their Norman oppressors. It would be wise to offer proof to these descendants of the Britons that Arthur was dead.

  Yet the monks’ story is likely true. In 1934, an archaeological team digging in the abbey ruins came across the base of King Arthur’s shrine, and in 1962, another team identified another grave the monks claimed to have dug up. It is possible that it was Arthur’s grave and that it originally had been marked by the stone slab the monks discovered, but over the years had been covered by earth and lost to view. The cross could have been placed beneath the stone when the grave was marked as Arthur’s in the tenth century when St. Dunstan was Abbot. Experts contend that its lettering could have been done then; the placing of lead crosses in graves was a common tenth-century practice.

  This evidence makes the story more complicated, as other Glastonbury claims were quickly discredited. Geoffrey Ashe, a well-known writer on the Arthurian legend, has pointed out: “The bones of St. Patrick and St. Dunstan were denounced as spurious by indignant voices from Ireland and Canterbury. But the Welsh made no comment on the depressing exhumation of their national chief. They offered no alternative legend, they produced no counter-Avalon [indeed, no place in Britain other than Glastonbury ever has claimed to be the Isle of Avalon], such an acquiescent hush has its own eloquence. It hints at a longstanding tradition of Arthur’s death and interment in the monastery, not widely familiar, but so fully accepted . . . that once the secret was out the English assertions could not be denied.”

  In any case, the 1962 discovery of the site of the grave, whether Arthur’s or not, was the first of a series of archaeological finds that suggest that much more of the Arthurian legend may rest on fact than previously imagined.

  The rediscovery in 1962 of the apparent site of Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury led to renewed interest in the area of Somerset, and the persistent legend that the hill known as South Cadbury Castle, twelve miles southeast of Glastonbury, was once the famous Camelot.

  In the early sixteenth century, the antiquarian John Leland visited the village of South Cadbury while touring England to gather information for his work, History and Antiquities of this Nation. The hill, the villagers told him, was “Camallate, sumtyme a famose toun or castelle.” They had heard “say that Arture much resortid to Camalat.” The top of the hill, where the ramparts of a centuries-old British hill fort could be traced beneath the grass, was known as Arthur’s Palace, or so another antiquarian, William Camden, recorded when he visited Cadbury in Queen Elizabeth I’s day. Within less than an hour’s walk were two villages named Queen’s Camel and West Camel. On the banks of the stream that wound through them, the battle of Camlann had been fought, where Mordred was slain and from which Arthur, seriously wounded, was carried to the Isle of Avalon at Glastonbury, a few miles away.

  These local traditions have an undeniable air of authenticity. King Arthur’s Causeway, which used to run across the marsh beneath the ramparts of the hill fort, is still visible along the fields of surrounding farms. The stream still winds through the fields between them, and hurried burials did take place in the past, indicating that a battle had been fought there. Over the centuries, plows turning up the ground of the eighteen-acre field on top of the summit uncovered a remarkable assortment of Roman coins, pottery, sling stones, building materials, and even traces of walls. It seemed that the hill, which had been occupied by Neolithic people more than 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, was still inhabited at the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. What archaeologists and antiquarians did not know, however, was if there ever had been an extensive reoccupation of the fort in the late fifth or early sixth century, the period in which Arthur must have lived.

  In the 1890s, a party searching for evidence of such a reoccupation on the hill, an elderly man asked them if they had come to take away the sleeping king from the hollow hill. What that grou
p found was not recorded, but a more rigorous excavation carried out shortly before World War I uncovered fragments of Romano-British pottery, along with artifacts featuring late Celtic workmanship. This was scarcely enough to establish a connection between South Cadbury Castle and Camelot.

  In the 1950s, however, further discoveries were made, including pottery dating from the Neolithic period and the pre-Roman Iron Age. Most interesting from the Arthurian point of view were pottery fragments similar to some already unearthed at the Early Christian monastery at Tintagel in Cornwall, as well as other shards of what may be a Merovingian glass bowl imported from the Continent in the sixth century.

  These discoveries were identified by Dr. Ralegh Radford, a British archaeologist, expert on Early Christian archaeology, and the most recent excavator of Glastonbury Abbey. Here was confirmation, Dr. Radford felt, “of the traditional identification of the site as the Camelot of Arthurian legend.” Geoffrey Ashe, author of a number of articles and books on the Arthurian period and legend was also intrigued by the finds. But without large sums of money, no proper excavation could take place, and collecting sufficient funds seemed unlikely until 1965, when Radford and Ashe formed the Camelot Research Committee. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, the noted excavator of Mohenjo Daro and the Indus Valley of India, was appointed president of the committee, and the direction of the work was entrusted to Leslie Alcock, then Reader in Archaeology at the University College of South Wales. Newspapers, publishers, the British Broadcasting Corporation, universities, and private donors gave financial help. The excavations were not limited to discovering Camelot; they were devoted to unearthing all the secrets of the hill’s history from its earliest known occupation by Neolithic peoples. The main focus was on finding archaeological proof of Arthur having lived there.

  These hopes were increased by finds at Glastonbury Tor, the steep hill that rises above the ruins of the abbey, where fragments of amphorae were discovered, establishing that in the sixth century - Arthur’s period - an important person had lived in Glastonbury Tor.

  Philip Rahtz, director of excavations at Glastonbury, believes Glastonbury Tor may have been the stronghold of a local chieftain and perhaps a signal station of some kind. It could have been linked with South Cadbury Castle - the legendary Camelot - to the south, with Brent Knoll, at the western end of the Mendip Hills, to the north, and from Brent Knoll north across the mouth of the River Severn to another sixth-century British camp at Dinas Powys in South Wales. From Brent Knoll, both Cadbury Castle and Dinas Powys, some forty miles away, are visible. It is likely that cooperation and communication between the British on both sides of the Severn were very close in the sixth century. The Saxons didn’t break through the line that connected the British defenders in Wales with those near South Cadbury Castle until the Battle of Dyrham in 577, sixty years after Arthur’s fight at Mount Badon.

  Extensive excavation at South Cadbury Castle began in the summer of 1966. The team of archaeologists and students who climbed the summit hoped to establish Arthur’s existence, linking the hill with Camelot. Looking across the banks and ditches of the ramparts to the fields below, it was easy to imagine Arthur riding out from the misty swamps to do battle.

  One volunteer said she believed Camelot was at South Cadbury. She felt sure that one day, she and her colleagues would come across the incontrovertible proof.

  But the digging of 1966 revealed nothing as dramatic as a medallion bearing the imprint ARTORIUS. Perhaps it was unrealistic to hope for such clues: No one has ever found coins minted in Britain in the sixth century. But quite a few inscriptions from this period have been discovered in Britain and Ireland, incised on stone or metal. In Ireland and the Irish colonies in west Britain, these inscriptions are in Ogham, an alphabet of twenty letters, consisting of upright and sloping lines arranged in groups. In Britain, memorial slabs and pillars are engraved in the Roman fashion, although these are usually found only in consecrated Early Christian cemeteries.

  No inscriptions of any kind, however, turned up at South Cadbury in 1966. But the short and preliminary excavations were illuminating.

  The researchers found a stone wall built by Saxons that likely protected a fortified burh, or settlement. This lent weight to the belief that eleventh-century coins bearing the mark CADANBYRIG, which have been discovered elsewhere, were made at a mint at South Cadbury. The archaeologists also found pieces of Roman armor, a pre-Roman Iron-Age trench, the remains of a collapsed Iron Age house, and from the Early Christian period between Roman times and the age of the English mint, shards of Mediterranean wine jugs and dishes, suggesting some occupation in the sixth century. “This brief reconnaissance,” concluded the report by Leslie Alcock, “covered less than one seven-hundredth part of the interior and has amply confirmed the rich potential of South Cadbury Castle in both structural and cultural terms. Particular interest attaches to the . . . long perspective of Celtic and Romano-British occupation which forms the chronological background to the Arthurian period at Cadbury. Clearly the site, in all its aspects, now demands large-scale exploration.”

  In the summer of 1967, excavations began again, after the Camelot Research Committee’s appeal for funds had brought in further contributions. That year, they made more discoveries. The Saxon wall, with twenty-four feet of it unearthed, was the longest seen in England. Beneath it was the last Iron Age rampart, and between the two was what the excavators called the Stony Bank.

  The Stony Bank contained yet another shard of imported sixth-century pottery, fragments of Roman-style roof tiles, lumps of tufa - a light stone used by Romans as a building material - and a Roman sling stone. The sling stone’s presence showed that this layer of the wall must have been constructed after the Roman conquest of Britain; the tiles and lumps of tufa likely came from a pagan temple built in the third or fourth century. The remains of such temples already had been discovered in other Iron-Age forts in Britain. The pottery presumably got there after the Stony Bank was built and before the Saxon wall was erected. Thanks to these discoveries, it’s clear that Cadbury Castle was re-fortified in the sixth century as a stronghold against the Saxon invaders.

  Prior to digging out the wall and new section of the summit the researchers conducted a geophysical survey. Instruments that looked something like mine-detectors scanned the pattern, shape, and density of the archaeological features beneath the turf. These instruments, known as soil conductivity meters, work on a principle similar to radar. They had not been used in archaeological work before and were successful in helping Alcock decide which areas were the most promising for that year’s digging. When printed, the readings revealed traces of what might have been extensive buildings constructed on top of the old Iron-Age fortress of Arthur’s time. Something that looked remarkably like a main hall aroused excitement among the researchers.

  Subsequent excavations did not live up to the promise of the conductivity meters, but they did uncover something that baffled experts. As the weeks of July and August 1967 passed, the archaeologists unearthed a trench that followed no explicable pattern.

  None of the experts on hand could explain what purpose this zig-zagging trench might serve. At first, they thought the hill had been used for military exercises during World War I. Volunteers shared their interpretations: “A giraffe’s tomb” and “Patio of King Arthur’s Palace.”

  Then, someone realized that if the U-shaped part of the pattern were repeated beneath the turf outside the area of excavation, the combined trenches would form a cross.

  A look at the geophysical survey plan showed that the pattern did, indeed, suggest that a cruciform trench might be in that sector of the hill. No one, however, had been looking for such a shape. The team had been seeking evidence of the round buildings of the Iron Age and the rectangular buildings of the Early Christian period.

  Alcock ordered three trial digs outside the excavated area. In each case, the excavators uncovered a further section of the trench. The cruciform plan was established.

  This
design could be explained most easily as the plan of a church. Such a plan, in the shape of an equal-armed Greek cross, first appeared in the Middle East in the late fifth century. It was by no means common, however, in Arthur’s time. Some historians have suggested that this could have been Arthur’s chapel at Camelot, later demolished by the Saxons to provide stones for their wall. But no traces of mortar or stone chips have been found to confirm this hypothesis, and it seems more likely that work on the building was abandoned as soon as its foundations were in place.

  Experts question whether the trench was dug in the sixth century, or even by the Saxons; the unfinished foundation may have been laid as late as the eleventh century, and the building may have been broken off when the mint was removed and the Saxon settlement abandoned early in the reign of King Canute. But carbon-dating by British archaeologists in 2012 suggested that clay crucibles and vivid blue-green window glass, uncovered at the site in the 1950s, were made circa 680. That puts the structure within the reign of King Ine of Wessex, who was credited in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with building a monastery at Glastonbury. The remains of five glassworks at the site also provide the earliest and most substantial evidence of glass-making in Saxon Britain.

  Excavation at South Cadbury Castle resumed in the summer of 1968, and further Arthurian evidence was unearthed, including fine fragments of sixth-century wine jugs; traces of what may prove to be the Saxon entrance to the stronghold, the “gate of Camelot”; and part of the foundation trench for what appears to be a large, sixth-century hall cut into the bedrock of the plateau. This building, thirty-five by seventy feet, may have been the great hall of Camelot, but its discovery marked an exciting moment in the search for King Arthur’s Britain.