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King Arthur in Shropshire
King
Arthur may have been born, lived and died in Shropshire.
King
Arthur may have actually been a king of the Votadini tribe. They did their
pillaging and what-not around Viroconium, close to modern Wroxeter. He married a
local girl , too. The good lady Guinevere -
or Ganhumara - came from Oswestry.
Oswestry, named after King Oswald of Northumbria, who died in
AD641. He was nailed to a tree - hence the name "Oswald's Tree". According to
legend a passing eagle took a limb but dropped it and where it landed a spring
burst forth - St Oswald's Well.
The
King Arthur we have all been brought up with was a romantic figure surrounded by
his Knights of the Round Table.
Much of this was based on myth and legend drawn from the Medieval
Arthurian Romances (circa 1150-1480). But like
many legends they nearly all have some basis in fact - facts which get lost in
the mists of time.
The
real King Arthur may have been a certain ‘Owain Ddantgwyn - The Bear’, a great
king of the Dark Ages who ruled his kingdom from Wroxeter near Shrewsbury.
Manuscripts in the British Library, from much earlier than the Medieval
Romances, suggest that King Arthur historically
existed. The earliest reference to Arthur, which is still in existence, suggests
that Artur was in fact a king of Powys, a kingdom
that once covered what is now Shropshire and Mid Wales.
He is
revealed to be the British warrior who, following the Roman withdrawal in the
fifth century, defeated the invading Anglo-Saxons at the
battle of Badon (493AD).
Excavations at the Dark Age capital of Powys, Wroxeter, four miles to the east
of Shrewsbury, have shown that in the fifth century this city may have been the
most sophisticated in the country.
This
is precisely the time that King Arthur is said to have been Britain’s most
powerful king.
A
tenth-century manuscript in the British Library records that Wroxeter was
occupied around 493AD by Owain Ddantgwyn, a late fifth-century king of Powys and
an important warlord. There is contemporary historical evidence that he was
actually known as Arthur.
The Wrekin
 The Wrekin is perhaps Shropshire’s best known landmark.
It is a legendary hill that, from this way it looks like a mountain, and that way, it
crouches low. From the top you can see fifteen counties.
It was also the inspiration for Tolkien's
Middle Earth in the acclaimed series of books The
Lord of The Rings. Tolkien used to live nearby and drew inspiration from
the magnificent Shropshire landscape.
It dominates the view of Telford and Ironbridge being 1335 ft tall and who would
have guessed that Shropshire folk-lore tells us it was built by a giant who took
a dislike to Shrewsbury.
The Giant in question was a Welshman who dug a spadeful of soil and planned to
dump it into the River Severn, flooding the town.
However, whilst slogging across the Shropshire hills, this giant lost his
bearings and having only got as far as Wellington stopped for a rest. Sitting on
the roadside he called out to a passing cobbler trying to find the direction to
Shrewsbury. He told the cobbler he was going to flood the town.
The cobbler, a quick thinking business man, thought for a moment and realized if
the giant flooded Shrewsbury, he’d lose all his customers.
The cobbler quickly emptied his sack of worn out shoes onto the roadside and
told the giant that he’d worn these shoes out himself coming from Shrewsbury.
The giant, thinking better of his plan then decided to forget about Shrewsbury
and go home instead. The Giant dumped his spadeful of soil on the roadside, and
then scraped his boots clean with his spade.
The mound of earth became the Wrekin and the smaller hill where he scraped his
boots became the Ercall.
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