Oh no, not another Camelot!

[Mick Hession]

I am quite sure he was not referring it to a known location: he would have picked up 'Camelot' from a trail of Gaelic and Grail literature, and would have failed to make any down-to-earth connection with Colchester itself.  Had he actually worked out where it was, we would not currently be paying any attention to Welsh and Cornish locations with questionable place-names.

There is no Gaelic literature on Arthur/Camelot. Zero. Nada. Zip. 

As to the other Arthurian sources, I suggest reading Guy Halsall's Worlds of Arthur.

Cheers
Mick

[Imperial Dave]

read that Mick...not bad

of course with things like this we are assuming there IS a Camelot.....

[Patrick Waterson]

There is no Gaelic literature on Arthur/Camelot. Zero. Nada. Zip. 

Umm .. yes, sorry.  For 'Gaelic literature' please read 'Celtic tradition', written or otherwise.

of course with things like this we are assuming there IS a Camelot.....

Or was ...

It looks (at least to me) as if 'Sub-Roman Britain' saw a local leader who became a national leader, who went down to posterity by the name of Arthur, and as knowledge of his actual deeds faded but the general impression of his prowess remained he became the subject of an increasing number of perhaps increasingly imaginative bardic tales as the Anglo-Saxons conquered more and more of England.  Tracking back from such substance as was captured by Geoffrey of Monmouth etc. - and we are talking about a net with a fairly wide mesh and an unknown number of holes - it is possible to locate his 'Camelot' geographically by tracing Arthur's final campaign.  (It is also possible to use the same method to get an idea of where Mons Badonicus really was, but that is another story - funnily enough, the name works there, too.)

Arthur's final campaign points towards Chelmsford as the site of the final battle ('Camlann') and hence to Colchester as the capital.  Colchester's features I have already touched upon.

[Imperial Dave]

There is no Gaelic literature on Arthur/Camelot. Zero. Nada. Zip. 

Umm .. yes, sorry.  For 'Gaelic literature' please read 'Celtic tradition', written or otherwise.

of course with things like this we are assuming there IS a Camelot.....

Or was ...

It looks (at least to me) as if 'Sub-Roman Britain' saw a local leader who became a national leader, who went down to posterity by the name of Arthur, and as knowledge of his actual deeds faded but the general impression of his prowess remained he became the subject of an increasing number of perhaps increasingly imaginative bardic tales as the Anglo-Saxons conquered more and more of England.  Tracking back from such substance as was captured by Geoffrey of Monmouth etc. - and we are talking about a net with a fairly wide mesh and an unknown number of holes - it is possible to locate his 'Camelot' geographically by tracing Arthur's final campaign.  (It is also possible to use the same method to get an idea of where Mons Badonicus really was, but that is another story - funnily enough, the name works there, too.)

Arthur's final campaign points towards Chelmsford as the site of the final battle ('Camlann') and hence to Colchester as the capital.  Colchester's features I have already touched upon.

blimey...been wasting my time all these years Patrick with Arthuriana lol

Do you know how many Camlan(n)s there are Britain? 

[Chuck the Grey]

I think that the search for Camelot is like the search for the perfect set of wargaming rules. An exercise in futility, driven by hope and doomed to disappointment. Yet, we search onward.

[Imperial Dave]

I think that the search for Camelot is like the search for the perfect set of wargaming rules. An exercise in futility, driven by hope and doomed to disappointment. Yet, we search onward.

I am inclined to agree Chuck.

I have been reduced to the holistic approach no matter how enticing individual bits of info appear, for example......

where I live there is a town called Bassaleg which is the crossing point of the rather bendy river Ebbw (nearby town Glynebwy or Ebbw Vale) on the route of the Roman road from Caerleon and has a couple of hill forts one of which is called Graig y Saeson and a Maes Arthur nearby. Within a stones throw is an old ferry crossing from a Roman signal station across to another Roman road junction that leads to Bath

I have just mentioned about half a dozen of the supposed Arthurian battle sites within a few miles of each other. Means nothing although very interesting!

[aligern]

Might I suggest that there are three stories here:
Firstly there is the story of the Anglo Saxon and Irish invasion and conquest of Britain...well large areas of it. In that story there is a period where the Britons fight successfully, pin the invaders back and create a pause of half a century. There is then an advance by the Saxons which changes the balance of power in their favour to the extent that they will eventually take England.

Secondly there is a legend of Arthur and/or a British leader of the time who fights battles that are probably associated with the successful period for the British.

Thirdly there is a whole structure of legend and romance that uses Arthur as a base, but draws on classical history, Sarmatian legend, Celtic bardic poetry etc and has very tenuous links with actual history.

One huge problem with the Arthur myth is that the story only really gets some substance some 300 years after his floruit. Arthur believers, and especially those in rather lightweight TV programmes, have a distinct tendency to join the mediaeval romance to the ninth century story, as though Nennius was writing as an almost contemporary source, to the proposed battle sites. So Arthur gains a degree of support, as though Nennius was describing current events.

The map of Britain in Arthurian times is uncertain, particularly in Mercia. Archaeology is gradually filling the gaps, but we don't really know what areas had already gone , which would be a considerable help as it is lijely that Arthurian battles , if they occurred, were on frontiers, or borders. So, if one believed in Arthur and tied his actions to the pushback of the Britons (which has the advantage of tying his fame to an heroic and winning period for them) we should expect to find actions against the kniwn Anglo Saxon core sites and their invasion routes that are aimed at the British states. That is to say we should see some strategic sense in the battles. We should also expect strategic sense to correlate with Arthur's base of operations and with his final battle against British 'rebels'. Of course, if Arthur was just a local hero somewhere who got grafted on to the story of the fightback then that would not help us.
Plumping for Arthur being a leader of the British Reconquista would cause us to doubt Colchester and Chelmsford as sites as they are so far forward, being right on the East coast. More likely that he is based in the area of the Severn , say Viroconium or further up in Chester. A site in the SW such as Cadbury or on the Borders would be rather peripheral to where the action of a fight back would have been.

[Imperial Dave]

nice summary Roy, thanks 

my own particular take is that there are 2 definitive phases with a later sub phase tag on

- mid 5th Century with Ambrosius Aurelianus performing the first round of battles....very possibly as a Dux/warleader.
- early to mid 6th Century with a proper Brythonic warband leader in the role of guerilla fighter trying to stem the tide of advance from now established multi-generation English/mixed race settlements (with reinforcements from the continent)
- a sub phase in the 7th Century where we have a possible 'Arthur' (ap Meurig) operating in the contested border lands of South and Mid Wales

The later legends probably (for me) scoop up the main 2 and possibly the third phases and role them into one person. If you read the sources there are a lot of muddled histories in them and so there is no reason to not think that this happens with the Arthur story and character

[aligern]

Dave, I agree there is a substantial chance of stories getting 'rolled up' as you say because its in the nature of bardic transmission that the bard takes a story line from one tale and adds it it in to a new composition. I doubt audiences in the early middle ages  worried too much about plagiarism and copyright. There is, for example a story in the life of Robert Guiscard in which someone allegedly dies and the body is taken into a town for burial, he is not dead and under the 'corpse' is a pile of swords. They oass the walls, the cadaver jumps ip , the swords are handed out, the gate seized. I am pretty sure tge story is also told of Harold Hardrada, by Snorre.  These are crafty, fierce warriors and perhaps the one necessity of the story is that it fits what they would have done. If Arthur is a great war leader then appending the battles of others to his list is likely no great problem, esoecially centuries after the event.
R

[Imperial Dave]

absolutely Roy.

I have invested a lot of time into Arthuriana and come up with smoke and mirrors with regards to a definitive history. Like I said, I look to the holistic appraisal of the facts (few as there are) and am content to 'allow' some allegorical and/or story telling 'info' to colour the fringes of the basic core. To do otherwise is to become Merlin (if he exists) and go mad

PS the heap of corpses story (Im not dead!) is also attributed to Harold in one version

[Patrick Waterson]

Assuming we had a British leader who not only halted the tide of Saxon conquest in the 5th-6th century AD (once the cities' final appeal to Rome had gone unanswered) but managed to roll it back and make himself master of the island before it all ended in tears and civil war with his would-be successor, Colchester would be the ideal capital for him once he became established, no matter where he may have started from (which may have been the Welsh border, York, the West Country or anywhere).

The map of Britain in Arthurian times is uncertain, particularly in Mercia. Archaeology is gradually filling the gaps, but we don't really know what areas had already gone , which would be a considerable help as it is likely that Arthurian battles , if they occurred, were on frontiers, or borders.

Not necessarily: they could just as well have occurred within heartlands.  While it is in theory desirable to meet the foe at the border to preserve one's lands from devastation, a major incursion, particularly by sea, might not allow one to concentrate in time or place and hence one would fight where one happened to have an advantageous position.  Still, I think Roy's approach is generally along the right track: look for actions to correlate rather than just relying on names.

Do you know how many Camlan(n)s there are Britain? 

More than enough to amuse generations of would-be amateur philologists.  However there is only one at a point where a major river has a ford on the route from London and the south-east to the then-capital and at that point ceases to be navigable.  Chelmsford is the ideal place for Mordred to rendezvous with his Saxon allies to block Arthur's army returning from the continent and moving on Colchester.  It fits like a glove once the elements are identified, without any forcing.

Has anyone had any success finding Mons Badonicus?  (Hints: 1) it is Badonicus not Badonus; 2) Arthur was campaigning in Scotland at the time.)

On the general subject of legends, they do tend to be based on truth even if the base has been stretched.  Opening the pages of the Greek Alexander Romance, for example we find that Alexander and Porus engaged in battle for a fortnight without either gaining an advantage.  With our trusty copy of Arrian to hand, we can tell that someone has over-egged the pudding until it hatched and went 'cuckoo'.  However it does rest on a basis of truth: the pre-battle manoeuvrings that resulted in Alexander successfully crossing the river did go on for the better part of a fortnight.  The trick is to develop a feel about what to look for.

[Erpingham]

Medieval Romance authors took stories and embroidered them.  If we look at some of the stories around Charlemagne's knights, we can see a similar process to that of Arthur.  The major advantage we have with Charlemagne is we know he was real and we can see where the echos of reality occur.  To suggest we know where Arthur was campaigning at a particular time (e.g. in Scotland) when we don't know whether he existed and, if he did, when is a little futile.

[Imperial Dave]

assuming there was a battle of Camlann Patrick 

Its first mentioned in the Annals Cambriae some 5 centuries after the events so may or may not be a real battle and it may or may not be the real name if it was

No smoke without fire as they say but its a bit flimsy

[aligern]

Maybe no smoke without mirrors, Dave.
If the putative Arthur did drive the Saxons back he did not extirpate them from their bases. It looks a though the victory was not in any way complete.  Some of their  settlement areas such as Dorchester are well to the West. That makes Colchester rather out on a limb. Viroconium, on the other hand has the advantage that there is large scale new building there at the appropriate time and it is strategically sensible because Wales protects it to the rear and it is sufficiently far away inland to be safe from Irish sea raids.
As to Badon, I would vote for  Baydon in Wiltshire. It commands two Roman roads and the Ridgeway and is on the same expansion route that is resumed when the Saxons push on to Dyrrham later and cut Devon off from Wales.
Roy

[Imperial Dave]

my own 2 penneth worth is that we can sometime forget the spatial relationship of groupings to one another. There was no linear combat zone in my opinion. Foederati were placed in pockets all around the isles (the old Roman provinces that is) including Irish as well as  Saxon/Angles/Germanics. Well certainly for the early (1st) phase of fighting. Also goes partway to explaining why sometimes we appear to have 'celtic' sounding leaders in charge of 'saxon' groupings/warbands