KING ARTHURS

The story of King Arthur has roots on both sides of the English Channel, where parts of Cornwall and Brittany blur the lines of myth and history as you walk among legends

Words Andrew Eames

Best foot forward (left) The two halves of Tintagel were reunited with the opening of a new footbridge in 2019 that crosses the gorge, making the ruins accessible to all travellers; (previous spread) the bronze Gallos sculpture by Rubin Eynon is a popular sight at Tintagel, though it was castigated when it was first erected in 2016 by those who complained about the ‘Disneyfication’ of the site

On a cliff overlooking a surging sea in North Cornwall, the figure of a 2.4m-high metal knight in ephemeral robes stands resting his hands on his sword and gazing southwards. He may have seen something that we mere mortals cannot, because if you were to follow his eyes some 300km as the crow flies, you’d spot a trio of similarly huge metal men in a wooded glade in the village of Néant-sur-Yvel in Brittany, France, each seated at a circular table that looks achingly familiar. It’s a scene that has been torn from legends and stories told time and again.

These figures may be in different countries, but all four are part of the same mythology: the tale of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. While there’s no mistaking the seated trio of Arthur, Kay and Gawain in France, the Cornish statue is harder to place, and has been nominally titled Gallos (Cornish for ‘power’). But given that it stands on Tintagel Island (aka Camelot), a site up to its gauntlets in Arthurian legend, the majority of people who stand before it all come to the same conclusion as to its identity.

In the UK, we tend to think of King Arthur as ours.Yet the French have a similar idea, even going so far as to include Arthurian texts on their school curriculum. The reason is that the legend’s sources are in both English and French, and the two countries have their own charismatic Arthurian locations. Add to this the idea that Arthur may well never have existed, and it made me all the more curious to explore the two halves of a story told on both sides of the Channel. The facts, if there were ever any, are lost in the mists of time. When the Gallos statue was first unveiled at Tintagel in 2016, there were those who criticised its commissioners (English Heritage) for ‘Disneyfying’ Cornwall and muddying fact with fiction.That didn’t bother the business owners in Tintagel village, where even the car parks have names such as ‘Sword in the Stone’ and there’s barely a shop that doesn’t have a bucketful of plastic Excalibur swords outside. The whole settlement has an Arthur-based economy.

The village sits back from the coast, its straggle of a main street lined with shops selling Cornish pasties, magical minerals and polished helmets. The original community here was called Trevena, but it didn’t have sufficient good looks to waylay passing motorists, so it rebranded when Arthur-mania became big business in the mid-19th century.

As for Tintagel Castle itself, its dramatic location and gripping legend attracts a staggering 350,000 visitors every year, who are unlikely to go away disappointed. The ruins of the building, created for Richard Earl of Cornwall in the 13th century AD, stand on a promontory that has all but been cleaved in two by the weather over the centuries. Precipitous pathways snake up and down the rocks, although the recent addition of a footbridge has helped to make the castle remains more accessible to everyone.

It was a wild place to build a castle, but it was probably also largely symbolic, said Win Scutt, English Heritage’s senior properties curator, as he showed me around.