CHAPTER 8
Having taken a train from London to Newport, I took a bus to Caerleon. To enter the town itself, I first had to cross the bridge over the River Usk. In Roman times, and for a long time after, this was the major artery leading into the heartlands of Gwent. Given the strength of its currents and extreme range of tides, navigating it could not have been easy. Little wonder therefore that the Normans built New Port instead, close to the confluence of the Usk and Severn Estuary.
The town of Caerleon – really not much more than a village nowadays – was small but quaint. To say that it was atmospheric is an understatement: it positively reeked of undiscovered mystery. The commercial infrastructure, such as it was, consisted of a few craft shops (mostly in the aptly named ffwrwm, ie ‘forum’, centre), a couple of tearooms and a handful of pubs. There was none of the glitzy Arthuriana and New Age tat that characterizes modern-day Glastonbury or Tintagel. It was all very quiet and sedate. At the heart of the village was the Roman Baths Museum, a splendid building covering what, in Roman times, would have been a major amenity: the public baths. Next to this was the National Roman Legion Museum, an impressive stone and glass building with a columned portico. Inside this were numerous relics, including inscribed stones that dated back to when Caerleon was the home of the Legio II Augusta (from AD 75 to c.AD 290), one of the four legions originally sent to Britain by the Emperor Claudius. The Roman presence in Caerleon, which later reverted to native British occupation, ended after another usurping emperor, Carausius (AD 286–293), moved the 2nd Legion to Kent. Here, it was stationed at Richborough and rebranded the Legio II Britannica.
The ruins of Roman Caerlon, not all of which have been excavated, are extensive. Indeed, recent excavations have revealed that, by the standards of the day, this small town was once a large city. I left the museum and, after walking about half a mile over fields we now know cover extensive, unexcavated archaeology, came to an enormous, circular structure. It turned out to be an amphitheatre, a miniature version of the Colosseum in Rome. A sign informed visitors that during the Roman period this was used for gladiatorial combats, military training, theatrical events and maybe even circuses. Large enough to seat 6,000 spectators, it could accommodate an entire legion. Seeing this, my mind turned back to the story of Leodegrance and his gift to Arthur of the Round Table. Geoffrey tells us that this too was very big, certainly large enough to sit 150 knights at once. Such a table, if it ever really existed, would have been no ordinary piece of furniture: it would have been huge. Of course, Geoffrey (or his source) could have been exaggerating, but if we assume that each knight needed two and half feet of sitting space (30 inches), then the diameter of the round table would have needed to be roughly 120 feet, or 36 metres. Looking at the great, grassy space in the middle of the amphitheatre, I could imagine a huge table, shaped like a doughnut or ring, with knights seated round it.
Then I remembered something else that Geoffrey says. He tells us that when he returned from fighting, Arthur held his plenary court at Caerleon. Now this too is interesting, for a plenary court means one that is attended by everyone who is a member of that court. At such a court, all the members of the Round Table would be required to be present. This would be perfectly possible in the space provided by the amphitheatre. In fact, there would have been enough room there for all the knights and their entire entourages and families to attend. Logically, they would have sat where the legionnaires used to sit – on the banked terraces surrounding the central area. To me, the evidence was overwhelming that it was here, in the Amphitheatre of Caerleon, that Arthur held his plenary court, which in modern parlance we would call a parliament. For his banquet they would not have needed a dining table as such, for the Roman custom was to eat while sitting or lying on the ground. The ‘Round Table’ that Arthur was given as a wedding gift by Leodegrance was probably the amphitheatre itself.
Leaving the amphitheatre, I walked onward to the river, where some remnants of the town’s Roman walls are still standing. Seeing these framed against willow trees growing on the riverbank, I was reminded of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shallot. This poem, which I had had to learn at school, was the inspiration for J W Waterhouse’s painting of the same name that today hangs in the Tate Britain art gallery in London. Verse two goes:
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shallot.
In 1856, Tennyson lodged at the Hanbury Arms, which stands next to a round tower that, in Norman times, was part of Caerleon Castle. Here, in a window seat overlooking the river, he wrote his epic cycle of Arthurian poems, Idylls of the King. Walking now myself along the river bank, towards this pub, and with a view of the window, it seemed likely that though it predated Idylls of the King by some 23 years, Tennyson had Caerleon in mind when writing The Lady of Shallot. Looking out over the river, I could almost see her floating in her funeral barge downstream, past the willows and aspens that grow so thickly here on the banks of the River Usk. The implication was clear: in Tennyson’s mind at least, Caerleon was the mythic city of Camelot.
Further evidence for making such a deduction was all around me. In Arthurian times, Caerleon still had its walls intact as well as various amenities such as public baths, barrack blocks, relatively good housing for the local aristocracy and a bustling market place, and for centuries it had been a major centre of Christianity. According to various Welsh Annals, it was the original seat of the archbishopric that in the 6th century was moved first to Llandaff (Cardiff) and then later to Menevia (St David’s).
Caerleon’s religious eminence was not without reason. Within its precincts were churches dedicated to the two earliest recorded British martyrs, St Julius and St Aaron, and as a port it had extremely good communications. Ships from Caerleon could easily sail up the River Severn to the old Roman city of Gloucester or downstream to Devon and Cornwall and, beyond them, to Gaul, Spain and the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, looming over the town and dominating the entire area, was a truly massive Iron Age hill fort. Lookouts posted here could see for miles in all directions. They would spot any attackers, whether they came by land or sea, long before they arrived. Then, using a system of beacon hills that probably went back to long before Roman times, they could alert not just the local population but the whole region of Glamorgan/Gwent. The conclusion was obvious: Caerleon had to be ‘Camelot’ – King Arthur’s capital.
Fortunately, if you know where to look, there are contemporary documents to hand that proved beyond doubt that he and his dynasty existed. On my next trip to Wales I was to be shown some of these, which would result in my quest taking a new direction altogether.