Cadbury Castle

Cadbury Castle, the later name for the stronghold identified in the book with Camelot at South Cadbury, stands where historical landscape and Arthurian legend meet. Its hilltop fortifications and local traditions give the romance a tangible setting, even as the text cautions that the geography of Arthur’s story shifts freely between places and times.

Names and the changing geography of Camelot

The antiquarian account traces the site through several names. Leland, writing early in the reign of Henry VIII, called it Camallate or Camalat and described it as a once-famous town or castle on a steep hill, strongly fortified by nature. Maps from 1575 and 1610 call it the Castle of Camellek; the 1727 edition of Camden’s Magna Britannica says that local inhabitants called it King Arthur’s Palace. Not long after, an antiquarian reported that the name had been superseded by Cadbury Castle.

The surrounding place-names preserve the older form. The neighbouring Queen-Camel, also called East Camel, and West Camel remain, as does the river Camel, which is crossed by Arthur’s Bridge. This naming network situates the site within a local Arthurian landscape, though it does not settle the larger question of Camelot’s location. The account notes that Malory variously associates Camelot with Glastonbury and Winchester, while Caxton appears to connect it with Wales, probably meaning Caerleon. The romance’s geography is described as fanciful and unconstrained by consistent time or place; the identification of Camelot with South Cadbury is a tradition supported by local antiquarian evidence, not a definitive resolution of those competing locations.

Fortifications and material remains

The hilltop enclosure was described as having four ditches and four walls around a central area of about thirty acres. Foundations and wall remains were visible there, and Roman pavements, urns, coins, and other relics had been found. Leland also recorded the place-name Camalat and mentioned a silver horseshoe associated with the site. Together, the earthworks, archaeological finds, and changing names give the literary tradition a material setting, but the account does not establish that the surviving remains belonged to King Arthur or his court.

Local landmarks extend the association beyond the fort itself. Arthur’s well still flowed from the hillside, and nearby traditions named Arthur’s Hunting Causeway, Arthur’s Round Table, and Arthur’s Palace within the enclosure, although these could no longer all be pointed out to visitors. The remembered features and the evidence of walls and finds thus occupy different registers: some are physical remains or reported discoveries, while others survive as names and stories attached to the landscape.

Strategic setting and historical interpretation

The Reverend J. H. Bennett, rector of South Cadbury, assembled traditions recorded by Leland and others alongside accounts he gathered locally, and produced a detailed topographical description of the old town and fortress. He presented Camelot as naturally strong and further strengthened by human works, and connected its strategic position with the Isle of Avilion, Glastonbury Abbey, and Almesbury Nunnery.

Bennett proposed a historical context for the association with Arthur. After the Saxons took Sarum in 551, he argued, their advance through Somerset was checked for roughly a century, apart from their capture of Bath in 577. In his reconstruction, Camelot became the capital of the South British kingdoms and formed part of a line of strongholds holding back the advance. He suggested that such circumstances might have connected the legendary British hero with the site. This is an antiquarian historical interpretation offered to explain the tradition, rather than a claim that the romance itself establishes as fact.

Arthurian traditions and narrative significance

The local stories make the hill a place where Arthur’s court is imagined as present but unseen. A peasant girl reportedly said that through golden gates within the enchanted circle one could see a king seated among his court. Another tale, recorded by Bennett from a Cadbury villager, held that on full-moon nights Arthur and his men rode around the hill on horses shod with silver, stopping to water them at the wishing well; a silver shoe was said to have been found along their route.

The book emphasizes the longevity of the riding legend by comparing the local account with Gervase of Tilbury’s Otia Imperialia, dated to about 1212. Gervase recorded a British woods tradition in which foresters saw a company of hunters with dogs and horns who identified themselves as belonging to Arthur’s household and fellowship. The account also relates Gervase’s separate story of Arthur resting within Mount Etna, a parallel that makes the motif of the hidden, still-living king larger than the Cadbury landscape alone. In the local tradition, however, the hill, silver-shod horses, and wishing well anchor that enduring expectation in a specific place. Cadbury Castle’s significance lies in this convergence: fortifications and archaeological remains invite historical interpretation, while names, landmarks, and recurring stories make the site a powerful candidate for Camelot in the cultural imagination.