Abstract
AT the close of the present month, the Cornish Excavation Committee will begin the excavation of Castle Dore, a hill-camp which lies between Lost-withiel and Fowey. The excavation will be carried out by Mr. C. A. Ralegh Radford, who was in charge of the recent excavations at Tintagel. The Castle Dore camp, being situated on the line of a trade route which linked up Ireland, Cornwall and the Continent in prehistoric times, holds out every prospect by its geographical position alone of yielding material of interest and importance for archaeological studies; but in addition, recent research, notably by the late Prof. Loth, the Celtic scholar, and by the late Mr. Charles Henderson, whose untimely death was a great loss to Cornish archaeology, indicates that Castle Dore may be a focusing point of traditions which seem to indicate a connexion here with the King Mark of Arthurian story, whose bride Iseult was brought from Ireland by Tristan. King Mark lived at “Lancien” which Prof. Loth suggested may be the original form of the name of Lantyan, the parish in which Castle Dore is situated, and he also traced a possible connexion with the St. Samson who is the patron saint of the nearby Goland Church. A menhir known as the Castle Dore stone, which once stood near the camp, is also thought to be connected with King Mark under the name Conomonus or Quonomorius, while a doubtful interpretation of a much obliterated commemorative inscription would point to Tristan being his son and not his nephew. Other suggestions, derived from like sources, have been put forward, of connexion with figures of Arthurian tradition. Although it is scarcely to be expected that excavation will bring to light anything in the nature of concrete evidence to support the connexion, the body of tradition which clings to this valley of Fowey encourages the hope that it preserves a folk-memory of what was once an important centre of early civilisation.
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Archæological Investigation in Cornwall. Nature 137, 425–426 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137425d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137425d0