The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (25 page)

A Saxon advance from Lincoln towards Cirencester would have taken a direct route along the Fosse Way. However, the
ASC
tells us that though the Saxons had been making steady territorial
gains in the south, and archaeological evidence reaches the same conclusion for East Anglia, Lindsey and further north along the coast, central Britain was untamed territory. The Angles would have
needed to make far more gains towards the Midlands before risking an assault on the golden lands of the Cotswolds. The alternative would have been to march from East Anglia down Icknield Street to
Verulamium (St. Albans), and then either follow Ackeman Street to Bicester and then to Cirencester, or follow the Ridgeway to Swindon and up to Cirencester. The latter route would, again, take them
right past Liddington. There are no other logical routes that would take them past the alternative sites of Badbury Rings or Badbury Hill, and certainly not to Badby in Northamptonshire.

It would of course have been possible for the Saxons to sail round the coast and up the Severn Estuary, a daring tactic
considering the treacherous currents around
Land’s End, though one of which they were capable. Then they would either strike directly at Gloucester or divert along the Avon towards Bristol and Bath. But why go to such lengths when they
could have marched to Bath from the south anyway?

Not everyone accepts that Liddington is Badon, or that Badon need necessarily be in the south. Alternative suggestions run from Dumbarton in Strathclyde and Bowden Hill in the Lothians, to the
Wrekin in Shropshire or Caer Faddon near Welshpool. Dumbarton is a difficult one to accept if we believe that the battle was between the British and the Saxons in the 490s. The Gaels, the Irish
Scotii of Dál Riata, called it
Din Brithon
(the “Fortress of the Britons”), certainly not Din Badon. In any case Gildas, who allegedly came from this area, would call it
by its British name, Alclud.

Bowden Hill, near Linlithgow, relies on little other than the similarity of the name and the fact that, like Bath, it is on a River Avon, albeit six hundred miles away. In 1710, the antiquarian
Sir Robert Sibbald identified it in his
Account of Linlithgowshire
as having been the site of a major battle, and thereafter fancy took over. There is another Bowden in the Scottish Borders,
a village on the southern slopes of the Eildon Hills. Since a possible site for the previous battle at Agned is also in the Eildon Hills, and since this held the major British hill fort in the
area, it begs closer inspection, although it would seem strange for such a notable battle to be named after Bowden and not Eildon.

There is also a Bowden in County Durham, between the towns of Willington and Crook. It has all but vanished today, and the location is only worth noting because it is close to Vinovium/
Binchester.

Caer Faddon is the locale for Badon given in the Celtic tale
The Dream of Rhonabwy
(
see
Chapter 8) but its tradition as the site for a key battle may have derived from later
conflicts.

The Wrekin is championed by Frank Reno, who also draws upon
The Dream of Rhonabwy
, but interprets the directions differently. The Wrekin was a major hill fort outside present-day Telford,
near the old Roman town of Viriconium. This was the fourth largest town in Roman Britain and continued to be occupied, in various stages of disintegration and repair, well into
the seventh century. What is significant about Viriconium is that it had a major set of baths which almost certainly survived into the seventh century. Indeed, part of the outer wall,
known now as the Old Work, is still standing after 1800 years. Though it seems scarcely creditable that Gildas would refer to Viriconium as Badon, it is possible that in his delight for word-play
he would nickname the Wrekin as the Hill of the Baths. He may also have been alluding to the Breidden Hills, one of the probable sites for Caer Faddon, which can be seen from the Wrekin.

Another suggestion is Mynydd Baidan in mid Glamorgan, south of Maesteg. Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett suggest that the name
baidan
is derived from the Celtic for “to dare”,
which is
beiddio
in modern Welsh. North of Mynydd Baidan is Maescadlawr, which they translate as the “area of the battle field”. They believe this may be the site of the second
battle of Badon in the year 667, but it’s one worth considering for the original battle.

For completeness I should mention Laurence Gardner’s suggested site at Dun Baetan, near Carrickfergus in Ulster. In
Bloodline of the Holy Grail,
Gardner refers to the conflict
between the Scotii kings of Dál Riata and their Irish overlords. In their battle for independence, the Scots defeated the Irish at Dun Baetan in 516, but were defeated there in 575. It was
this second battle, according to Gardner, at which the young Artúir mac Aedan was present. Despite the internal logic and consistency of Gardner’s argument, there is an inherent
problem in accepting that the British would celebrate a victory in Ireland by Irish settlers in Britain, and Gildas specifically states that the victory at Badon was against the Saxons, not the
Irish.

Before plotting the locations, let us turn to Arthur’s final battle.

2. Camlann

Camlann is not included in Nennius’s list. This may be because the original compiler did not want to sing of a defeat but of Arthur’s victories, ending at the
triumph of Badon, or because the original list was compiled during Arthur’s reign, and therefore before Camlann. Its absence from the list is not necessarily critical, although it will
inevitably raise doubts about whether it
was fought by the same Arthur who fought the others. Curiously, Camlann is not mentioned anywhere else by Nennius, nor is it referred
to by Gildas. Its first appearance is in the
Welsh Annals
under the year 93 (539
AD
), the year “in which Arthur and Medraut fell.” It also appears in
several of the Welsh Triads, where the clear implication is that it arose out of a quarrel between Gwenhwyfar, Arthur’s queen, and Gwenhwyfach, Gwenhwyfar’s sister and the wife of
Mordred, and, in the way of such things, a quarrel led to a battle. Geoffrey of Monmouth typically took it out of all proportion and has Mordred abduct and seduce Gwenhwyfar and seize the kingdom
while Arthur is away. The Triads regard it as one of the “Three Futile Battles”, emphasising that it mushroomed out of nothing. This has the feel of authenticity, a memory of
Britain’s greatest hero brought low by a pointless quarrel.

Geoffrey of Monmouth places the battle at Camelford in Cornwall, based on no more than the name – the river Camel was known as Cambla – and possibly the proximity to Tintagel. The
bridge over the Camel here is known as Slaughterbridge, though this probably refers to a battle between the British and Saxons during the reign of Egbert of Wessex in 823. In fact, the name may not
refer to a battle at all as it could be derived from the old Saxon word
slaggy
for muddy, as in Slaggyford in Northumberland. In 1602 the antiquarian Richard Carew, one time High Sheriff of
Cornwall, developed the Arthurian connection in his
Survey of Cornwall
by identifying a stone near the Camel as being the spot where Arthur died. This stone, however, bears the inscription
Latini ic jack filius Mogari
, recording the burial of Latinus, son of Mogarus, and was probably brought to the site years before to form part of a footbridge across the river. Although many
Arthurian legends have developed in this area, it is difficult to find any basis for them.

The word Camlann means either “crooked bank”
(cam glan)
or “crooked enclosure”
(cam llan),
a phrase which must describe thousands of locations across
Britain. The River Cam in Somerset is a likely contender. It is a tributary of the Yeo and flows from the hills near Yarlington to join the Yeo just outside Yeovilton, near Ilchester. En route it
passes by the impressive hill fort of Cadbury Castle, long believed to be the original
Camelot. Excavations by Leslie Alcock in the late 1960s showed that Cadbury Castle was
significantly refortified from 470 onwards, for at least two generations. It was both a defensive fort and an inhabited village right through the Arthurian period. If it were occupied by Arthur
then Camlann may have been fought right on his doorstep. The Cam twists through a vigorous series of bends about a kilometre away at Sparkford.

In 1935 O.G.S. Crawford proposed that the name was originally
Camboglanna
, a Roman fort along Hadrian’s Wall at what is now Birdoswald. It is certainly true that here the river
Irthing twists its way around the site in a very crooked glen but, as Geoffrey Ashe has highlighted, the name Camboglanna, in evolving towards Camlann, would for centuries have been known as
Camglann,
and that ought to be how it is recorded in the
Welsh Annals
and any other near-contemporary sources. The fact that every source records it as Camlann suggests a much older
name. Nevertheless, Camboglanna has another connection of interest. Some thirty kilometres to the west, at what is now Burgh-by-Sands, was the fort of Aballava, which became Avalana by the sixth
century. The legend has Arthur taken to Avalon to heal his wounds after Camlann. Intriguingly, there are dedications at several of the forts along Hadrian’s Wall, including Aballava, to
Latis, the goddess of lakes and water. August Hunt has suggested she may be the basis for the Lady of the Lake legend.

Another northern site frequently suggested is Camelon, near Falkirk in the Lothians, just north of the Antonine Wall. It has also been suggested as the original for Camelot, most recently in
David Carroll’s
Arturius, A Quest for Camelot.
Laurence Gardner has Artúir mac Aedan fight at both Camelon and Camboglanna, in his battles against the Picts. Camelon was a
significant Roman fort which had been strengthened in the 140s at the time the Antonine Wall was built. The Roman name of the fort is no longer known, although the village that grew up around it
gained the British name of
Caermawr
(“Great Fort”) so is unlikely to be confused with Camelot. It is difficult to know when it was abandoned, because the site was substantially
robbed and subsequently built over. The presence of a nearby Romano-British temple, now called Arthur’s O’en, suggests a stable period of
occupation. Nevertheless,
the fort was almost certainly abandoned by the mid third century and steadily fell into ruin.

There are several locations in Wales still called Camlan today. Two of these are near Dolgellau, near the village of Mallwyd, a name which may mean “battle ground”. This is the area
advocated by Blake and Lloyd in
Pendragon
and by Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett in
Artorius Rex Discovered.
It is close to other locations connected with Vortigern and Ambrosius, and
to several of the suggested sites from the battle list, especially the rivers Glen and Dubglas. It is also close to one of the suggested sites for Llongborth (discussed below), showing that it
might fit a pattern of struggles within the Welsh princedoms. There is also a stream called Afon Gamlan just north of Dolgellau, emphasising how common the name is in the area.

Another site is also associated with the battle. This is Cwm Llan, a valley on the southern flanks of Snowdon, close to the fort of Dinas Emrys. Peter Bartrum draws attention to the legend about
this battle as recorded in
Y Brython.
It tells how Arthur and his men were heading from Dinas Emrys towards the pass over Snowdon at Cwm Tregalan, and met the enemy in Cwm Llan (“the
Valley of the Lake”). Arthur was able to push the enemy back but at the top of the pass they were ambushed in a hail of arrows. Arthur was killed and buried where he fell at a cairn called
Carnedd Arthur, and the pass is still called Bwlchysaethau, “the Pass of the Arrows”. A steep climb down from the pass takes you to Llyn Llydaw, supposed to be the home of the Lady of
the Lake. Nearby is supposed to be Ogof Llanciau Eryri (“The Cave of the Young Men”) in which, rather like the Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, the seven who survived
Camlann are supposed to be sleeping, awaiting their call to fight again for Arthur.

The Welsh sites are tempting because of the continuity of the name, but we should not forget that the name would have been just as common throughout Britain before the Saxon settlement.
Nevertheless, the Welsh sites suggest a link with Arthur of Dyfed, who probably had conflicts with Gwynedd in this region. These sites do not, however, fit comfortably with any for Badon, raising
again the question of whether the battles were fought by two different Arthurs.

3. The Saxon sites

Before we map out all of the above locations, we need to remind ourselves of the known Saxon battles during the Arthurian period. If Arthur’s twelve battles were all
against the Saxons or Angles then, although the
ASC
was not given to recording defeats, there may yet be some hints.

We have determined that the Arthurian period ran from about 480–520, and the
ASC
lists these battles during and around those years.