The Entire History of Tintagel // Arthurian Castle Documentary

foreign it's one of the most iconic fortresses in Britain [Music] [Music] teetering on the edge of the Celtic Sea 250 feet over the windlashed waves below today it's surrounded by a picturesque Village just one of many along this Rocky Cornish coastline but tintagel home to fishermen and Farmers for as long as anyone can remember is different atop the ancient rocks of a sea surrounded outcrop High medieval castle Looms but underneath is where it gets really interesting foreign [Music] [Music] and Wildflower Meadows lies perhaps the greatest of all settlements in sub-roman Britain [Music] almost an island today the castle site has always been an excellent defensible position [Music] And yet when Earl Richard of Cornwall the brother of the king built the place in the later 13th century at huge personal expense it had almost no strategic value at all [Music] that age of chivalric values and hearkening back to the Glorious past of Elder days it was a legend that inspired Richard to build the place one of the greatest of all famous from the Scottish borders to the steps of Eastern Europe the legend of Arthur [Music] for when the famous 12th century writer Jeffrey of Monmouth penned his Blockbuster account of the Great Hero King in 1138 ultimately becoming one of the most popular books in the entire Medieval Age tintagel emerges triumphantly as the birthplace of Arthur himself like most high-ranking Nobles of the time one of the richest landowners in Britain in fact Earl Richard was obsessed with the tale [Music] it's difficult to say what tintagel looked like before Richard built his fortress on top of it whether any of the original structures survived above ground perhaps serving as part of the inspiration for the collection of ancient Cornish Tales Jeffrey May well have utilized in his account [Music] whether any genuine shreds of Truth survived from the place to linger on in the later Arthurian tradition [Music] whether even the name itself has any shred of authenticity apparently being an anglo-french addition only given to the place comparatively recently in the 12th century [Music] and yet after close to a century of archaeological investigation we know now Richard's Castle was built on early medieval foundations dating back centuries to the murky post-roman Twilight of the fifth sixth and 7th centuries A.D the age of Arthur today tintagel remains one of those ever elusive places of Mystery a site that continues to Astound Scholars and the general public alike where once archaeologists expected only to find the scattered hovels of a monastic community today a complicated series of secular dwellings storehouses and even a probable Great Hall have been revealed not to mention the vast collection of imported Pottery fragments excavated over the last hundred years or so the remains of luxury goods brought in from the Mediterranean and Beyond more than almost every other contemporary site in Britain put together in its highly defensible position on an isolated Rocky outcrop most Scholars today are in agreement tintagel could have been nothing less than the Fortified administrative center of an early medieval ruler so-called Dark Age following the collapse of Roman Britain one of if not the most important in Cornwall ruling over a heavily defended focal point where luxury goods would arrive for redistribution where a duke or a king could hold Court [Music] and just maybe some shred of a memory of a real Duke golua of Cornwall or Uther Pendragon might make its way into memory and oral tradition almost certainly one of the most important strongholds of all from that far-flung age [Music] foreign and now just in the last 20 years yet more excavations have added further to the tale in 1998 in one of the most unusual discoveries of all in a long line dating back close to a century a stone slate was uncovered with a number of carvings etched some 1400 years ago [Music] alongside a number of fascinating drawings of warriors and various Christian symbols crude Latin words were found too words close enough to Arthur to become a media sensation all over the world red ognu so then we must ask the question did some kind of an author really live at tintagel hello and welcome to the show my name's Pete Kelly I'm a historian and a filmmaker from England for the last six years or so I've been traveling all over Britain investigating the medieval and ancient sites of our ancestors over the last couple of years I've branched out to travel all over the world too visiting the greatest archaeological sites found anywhere on this channel I bring you along for the ride you can also sign up to my free mailing list to get archeology Journeys straight into your email inbox every couple of months and shortly we'll get back to the early medieval past but first a quick word from our sponsor foreign Tales are filled with tragic stories of betrayal of great rulers tricked and deceived by bitter enemies one of those figures was the high king of Britain Aurelius Ambrosius brother of Uther Pendragon and Uncle of King Arthur one day as he prepared for battle against the Saxon Menace he found himself overcome by fever and eventually it turns out he'd been poisoned by a Saxon masquerading as his doctor we can't say for sure but if Ambrosius had had access to nordvpn then maybe he and his court would have been able to prevent the Saxon infiltration ultimately keeping hold of the island of Britannia very possibly altering the course of history as we know it today nordvpn works as an amazing defense against all kinds of online scams and cyber security problems packed with features like threat protection to protect a wary Romano British monarch from phishing scams not to mention the feature they are most famous for which allows you to change your IP address to be anywhere in the world thus accessing various different streaming platforms wherever you are on any device you choose speaking from personal experience this is incredibly useful when traveling if you don't already have a VPN then I highly recommend using Nord it gives you peace of mind and is packed with really useful features now we've teamed up to offer you a bonus month on top of a two-year plan just go to nordvpn.com forward slash Pete Kelly or click on my link in the description below and this will help me out immensely too they're even offering a 30-day money-back guarantee so it's completely free from risk thanks again to nordvpn for sponsoring this video and now back to the ancient past [Music] foreign archaeologists rally Radford arrived at tintagel in 1933. the Dark Ages were very much still dark still six years before the famous discovery of the Sutton who ship burial very little was then known about the centuries following Roman rule in Britain generally assumed to be a Savage uncivilized time little worthy of attention let alone study [Music] digs of rally Radford without particularly intending to began to change all that born at the very end of the Victorian age in 1900 after graduating from Oxford rally Radford helped to excavate the great High medieval Abbey at Whitby [Music] before studying and traveling abroad a rather conservative scholar when asked by the ministry of Public Works to investigate intagel a dig which would ultimately become a media sensation he staunchly believed the fines to be the remains of an early Christian monastery conclusion he would stick to again all advice for the rest of his long career grass covered foundations of post-roman structures can clearly be seen on the sloping edges of the headland and on the flat top of the Fortress more so than ever before because of recent excavations and yet in radford's time some could be seen above ground sprawling edifices of a once bustling settlement foreign it was these low walls just across the Headland from the main entrance [Music] uttering of structures watered by a shallow spring-fed well he first began to investigate [Music] perhaps because of the rectangular nature of the buildings suggesting Mediterranean Heritage rather than circular British Iron Age types typical of the period And before as well as the Christian symbols inscribed on some of the pottery Radford continued to think of the place as entirely monastic in nature not secular interpreting the more unique buildings as monastic cells and scriptorium to create written works fairness to Radford nothing like it had ever been found before and very little sense [Music] far from the home of King Arthur or even a dynasty of early Cornish rulers though some more unorthodox Scholars did suggest the possibility at the time Radford preferred to see tintagel as a Celtic monastery a rare light of Christian Learning in the darkness of the sub-roman Void uniquely far-sighted Community managing to cling on to distant trade links to the Mediterranean and Beyond [Music] indeed as they continued to show up at almost every other contemporary sites from the period across Britain and even Ireland it would be those Mediterranean Pottery fragments first brought to light by Radford that would be his enduring Legacy [Music] of course as his work amply demonstrated the place didn't need to be Arthurian to reveal a fascinating window into a never-before-seen material world of sub-roman Britain foreign like practically all archaeologists at the time radford's work was soon to be put on indefinite hold [Music] escaping from excavations in Italy just before the outbreak of the second World War in 1942 it was the luftwaffe who put an end to a great deal of the scholarship on tintagel not only destroying radford's Exeter home in a bombing raid but with it much of the already scattered records of the digs told data and material going up in flames undeterred Radford would return to dig at the site after the war remaining heavily involved until the later 1950s and yet in terms of his view of the place he would not budge still at the time of his death in 1998 remaining Resolute in his conception of tintagel as an ecclesiastical complex [Music] regardless of the nature of the settlement the early Digs at tintagel revealed a glorious fifth and sixth centuries A.D followed by a slow decline as the Mediterranean connections gradually died away [Music] and perhaps with them The Prestige and status of the place by the early 8th century it was abandoned for good [Music] similarly by the early 14th century with no Rich eccentric benefactor to maintain the estate at considerable personal expense foreign Richard having abandoned Britain entirely anyway in preference to a successful claim on the German throne the castle fell into disrepair more than anything else tintagel entering its centuries-long history as a spectacle for as long as britons have known the concept of holidaying they have come to tintagel as early as the 17th century well-to-do tourists arrived by horse cart to visit the place [Music] 19th century A Renewed interest in all things Arthur coupled with the Advent of the Victorian Railway led to a boom in visitors though a move to expand the railway from camelford to tintagel was ultimately unsuccessful they still came in droves via horse and cart the somewhat unhinged Splendor of that age can still be seen today in the Grand Hotel built on the adjacent Cliffs to the site in 1899 [Music] still open for a particularly Scenic pint of Ale the place is now known as the Camelot but back then it was grandly titled King Arthur's Castle [Music] even in those days tintagel was very much one of the most famous and impressive sites in Britain [Music] tears great deal has happened to permanently relegate rally radford's views to the Past the place genuinely having been much more important than that conservative archaeologist could begin to conceive though it remains ever mysterious the sheer scale of the place and amount of material Goods compared to other excavated sites make it almost certainly a court Fit For A King but what might that Court have looked like [Music] in 1983 fire tore through tintagel a great conflagration burning and eroding away much of the vegetation and Turf on the site but when the conservators and the excavators moved in due to a stroke of Fate they realized that the fire had revealed whole clusters of previously unknown buildings dating for more than five centuries before the high medieval castle ruins [Music] long before the 1980s centuries of landslides had already pulled away significant amounts of the Isthmus between the mainland and the settlement not to mention the outer edges of the rock itself its appearance changing significantly over the years One Thing Remains abundantly clear today there have been many tintagels entering the castle on the landward side Mains of Mighty curtain walls and a gate Tower Loom large [Music] imposing features to deter any would-be attacker thank you it was here in 1955 that a purse of late Roman coins was found giving some tiny hint of the deep Antiquity of the place and just beyond we have one of the most important parts of the site administrative Hub where Earl Richard built his Great Hall [Music] Richard first arrived at the site he was likely greeted by a large grassy Hollow shallow Terraces and tumbled Walls Within giving only hints of the Majesty the place once held whether he realized the significance of the spot we simply can't say but archaeologists have since found significant evidence of metal working right here hundreds of pieces of pottery from the 5th to 7th centuries and a number of completely unique finds a glass Shard for example once belonging to a large dish decorated with a pattern of Scrolls and circles perhaps lettering there is only one conclusion High status occupation luxurious and wildly expensive finds suggesting the place to have been utilized by a series of rich and Powerful individuals in other words it's probable that whether knowingly or not Richard built his Great Hall directly on top of the residence of a Dark Age ruler just maybe the rulers of the whole of Cornwall for a period of 200 years or more if it is a coincidence credible one entering the castle today is an experience like no other shuffling across one of the great construction projects of the English Heritage organization white waves churning on the Rocks below it's not hard to picture the place in its prime when construction on the castle began in the 1230s a short neck still connected the place to the mainland seaward walls probably existed too tumbled masonry long having since fallen into the waters below to head over that bridge today is to step back in time to a bustling Community where most people of the settlement would have lived Travelers Traders and warriors [Music] though we can't say for sure it's probable that the place acted as at least one capital for the kings of a forgotten Kingdom [Applause] [Music] kerno or both particularly for lawn Realms sadly obscured by The Mists of time not quite the glittering Camelot of Arthurian Legend but a wildly impressive Place nonetheless for the most part hidden underneath Richard's Castle today [Music] in 1990 it was here on the main Headland that a large-scale excavation project would begin the most significant yet though rally Radford continued to deny the possibility that any timber constructions could be on the island from an earlier age that's exactly what was found a whole plethora of building clusters coating the headland near everywhere the archaeologists dug of the walls are too incomplete to work out the original plan of the site exactly the narrow Terraces perhaps enlarged by hacking away portions of rock faces suggest simple slightly squared though irregularly shaped structures [Music] later to be replaced by Stone buildings [Music] astonishingly a total of eight building clusters have been investigated thus far n huddled around the sides of the headland others mostly obscured by later castle walls the oval shapes usually found at sites in Britain and Ireland at the time such as at nearby trethergy and Kelly rounds one of many so-called rounds which date to the same period but seem almost entirely pre-roman in nature the Clusters at tintagel all contain unique rectangular structures suggesting Continental or Mediterranean links very much influenced by the Roman world foreign then we have some of the best evidence for a purported continuity of some form of Roman way of life surviving into the Early Middle Ages left adrift in the wild Atlantic it is evidence that goes nicely alongside the writing of gilders in the early 6th century who speaks of a tyrant of domnonia by the name of Constantine to stand on that Headland to look out to the Sea we can imagine the bustle of 6th Century life of Traders coming from far away bringing news from the distant edge of the world of officials laying tax on products of warriors and kings [Music] did these people still see themselves as Roman of course we simply can't say but as we shall see many elements of the Roman way of life did survive here Christianity and the Latin tongue among them the first time I visited tintagel was as a child in the very early 2000s [Music] though I don't remember much from that trip besides incredible pasties and a perennial scramble to find somewhere to park I'm told the place has changed quite a bit in the years since as well as the mighty Bridge crossing over from the mainland statue to the mysterious King now stands on top of the island shrouded by a cloak he is something of a modern Arthur mysterious ever unknowable just like the stories themselves seeming to shapeshift depending on which way you look at him stories this was the place the Cornish Duke golua was deceived by High King of the britons Uther Pendragon [Music] using Magic concocted by the wizard Merlin Uther took goluar's form to get inside the castle specifically to goluar's wife a grain [Music] on that night Arthur was conceived it's an incredibly dark story by modern standards and generally thought to be mostly an invention by Jeffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century And yet when the artog new stone was found in 1998 shockwaves reverberated throughout the world of arthuriana the entire Mini Field of scholarship orbiting all things Arthur for many The Coincidence seemed too good to be true surely speaking of some sort of link to a real author [Music] in reality it's entirely possible probable even that the so-called inscription perhaps amounting to little more than a couple of stone cutters practicing their art can be translated from Celtic to mean bear famous or famous in a bear-like way others think it too much of a coincidence after all Arthur is often portrayed as bear-like in the most ancient of tales long before he became a king [Music] ultimately it's pretty sketchy evidence but it's the best there is for a real Arthur at tintagel nevertheless though we can't get close to Arthur we can unlike most other places in sub-roman Britain weave together a very basic history of the place from its very earliest days [Music] as we have seen numerous chance finds of Roman material show that at least some kind of occupation took place here during that time of the earlier Iron Age no conclusive evidence has yet been located though given the defensible nature of the place and its fresh water source it seems highly likely just North along the coast in clear view of the castle is the Promontory settlement at Barris nose and further along the coast next to Boze Castle is the Fortified settlement at Willer Park walled sea bastions of the early Celtic world by the third and fourth centuries A.D fragments of mortar and bowls seem to indicate a concrete late Roman presence locally produced Romano British items also testifying to the home-grown nature of the place perhaps a power center in League with the newcomers from the Mediterranean [Music] in time just like other high status communities across Britain beginning to voluntarily adopt the trappings of the Roman world unfortunately we don't even know the real name of the place and there are no surviving contemporary Cornish sources to shed any light on the matter and however turn across the sea to a land which involved itself heavily in Cornwall in the post-roman period And before seen in the great similarities in settlement structures across the Celtic Sea of course we can turn to Ireland in the Contemporary Irish sources a place named rosnant is often referred to as an important Cornish Bastion whether it is tint agile we can't say for sure but it remains a possibility foreign to much later hagiographies from elsewhere in the Celtic world some of the only sources on the period anywhere yet more shreds of evidence can be seen dubious as they often are specifically the legend of Saint Julian or Juliet [Music] a son of the Irish Warrior turned South Welsh progenitor King bricken brachenioch [Music] in the tale Julian just one of a whole host of Saint children begot on that first king of brickenyog is said to have arrived at tintagel in the 5th Century where he built a simple missionary building soon followed by a flourishing monastic Center it may well have been the enduring strength of tales like this that permanently swayed rally radford's opinion whether containing any shreds of evidence or not [Music] another enduring tale worthy of note is that of King mark seen in Legends and on the landscape in Wales Cornwall Brittany and as far away as the Scottish borders 9th century life of Saint Paul aurelian written by the Breton Monk ramanok Mark is identified with konamoros a king known elsewhere only from a single commemorative Stone near foe not far from tintagel thought to have ruled sometime in the sixth century often associated with the legend of Tristan and is old [Music] unfortunately unlike most of the Welsh and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms no King list at all survives for the kings of dominonia or anywhere else in the southwest of Britain in terms of historical sources only the names of two kings are known the first named as one of the tyrants of Britain during the early 6th Century by the Monk gilders one of the only sources to survive from that time is named as Constantine labeled a murderer and generally hated by gilders as an awful person specifically his name here is of Interest the only Roman one of the lot the other Dominion King in history the very last guarant defeated and pushed west of the Tamar river by the expansionist Saxon Kingdom of Wessex in the early 8th century and recorded as such in the Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle [Music] which may well be tied to the end of tintagel [Music] as political changes racked the kingdom for that fall as we've seen tintagel had an illustrious past a veritable golden age in terms of sub-roman material culture seen in coins from busy Gothic Spain the Byzantine Empire and all manner of luxury goods found nowhere else in Britain it's possible that the place survives in what might seem an unlikely source but perhaps one which gives a hint a just why tintagel was so prosperous in the first place foreign Ed in Northern Italy in the early 7th century the text known as the Ravenna cosmography was a unique attempt to describe all the knowledge of the known world at the time [Music] Britain of course though generally considered outside the remit of the lands of the former Western Empire comes into unusually sharp focus in the southwest of Britain a town is mentioned Puro coronavis perhaps a Corruption of Duro cornovia translating as the town of the cornovia there is a good argument that this may refer to tintagel or at least the area around it [Music] the reason for this of course being the archeology when rally Radford published an essay on the imported Pottery at tintagel in 1956. he inadvertently opened up an entire New Frontier in British post-roman studies soon leading to a flurry of other dakes like at Cadbury Castle and Dennis pois digs that would revolutionize our understanding of Britain's early middle ages [Music] though a number of the pottery pieces at tintagel are later medieval or even earlier Romano British a huge amount were from the 5th to 7th centuries went intagel enjoyed a prominent position as a Boom Town continuing to utilize contacts with the Roman world [Music] the 1990s yet more has been found the largest collection by far in the British Isles around 150 jars of all types one meter tall oil parts from Tunisia jars with foot spikes allowing them to stand on their own originating in what is now turkey globular jars from Greece and glassware from Spain and France [Music] very likely that ships mostly brought their goods to the South Coast but tintagel is where they would be amassed before being redistributed [Music] perhaps even to other centers around Britain via trade the evidence is quite clear whether Arthurian or not somehow tintagel enjoyed a monopoly [Music] though we can't say for sure perhaps the settlement was involved in the mining and exportation of raw tin [Music] a widely sought after and rare product though some of the best evidence of post-roman Britain found anywhere their remains no concrete evidence of Arthur it may be that stories of tintagel's greatness survived ultimately becoming caught up in the orbit of the Arthurian Tales but who knows what the future will bring there is much more archeology to be done what remains abundantly clear is that this really was an astonishingly great power center in sub-roman Britain thanks for watching don't forget to like And subscribe if you enjoyed the video it really does help me out and why not share it with a like-minded history fan thanks again and I'll see you next time

Channel: Pete Kelly

Views: 135,914

Keywords: history, travel, visiting history, ancient monuments, stone circles, visiting ancient history, ancient Britain, in search of ancient Britain, history time, archaeology, mythology

Id: XtIe-oS07gg

Length: 49min 32sec (2972 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023