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Legend

Cadbury Castle

South Cadbury, Somerset

Camelot, with King Arthur sleeping inside the hill.

In 1542 the writer John Leland said this hill fort was Camelot. Excavations in the 1960s found that around 500 AD someone had refortified it and built a great timber hall, just when Arthur would have lived.

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When
Iron Age onwards
Where
51.0242, -2.5310
Group
Legends

Visiting

Free. A steep path from the church in South Cadbury.

Cover of The Ledger of Lost Britain by Cale Mills
From the book

The Ledger of Lost Britain

In 1542 John Leland recorded the local tradition that it was King Arthur’s Camelot. It is a tradition, and Geoffrey Ashe’s argument that it was the base of a historical Arthur has not been widely accepted. But the hill is old, much older than Arthur.

The Romans arrived in AD 43. For most people that is where the history of Britain begins. But by the time the legions landed, people had already been living on these islands for thousands of years. They had hunted, farmed, mined flint, dragged stones across the country, raised a hill by hand, and buried their dead in great tombs. They left no written words. What they left was the ground itself. Every place in this book can be visited, or has been dug up, or is in a museum.

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