Slaughterbridge

King Arthur  Cornwall  Tintagel

Slaughterbridge is claimed to be a possible site for King Arthur's last battle, the Battle of Camlann or Camblan, in which Arthur killed Mordred, but was dealt a life-ending wound himself.   Slaughterbridge itself is situated on a small crossing of the River Camel, not far from Camelford two miles to the south and three miles to the east of Tintagel. Now the River is a small stream in the bottom of a valley.   Slaughterbridge is possibly also real site of a battle between the invading Saxons and the Cornish in AD 823 or 824 or 825.   The Battle of Camlann, according to the Welsh Annals, which were written several centuries after the events they record, describes the scene thus:   "AD 539 The Battle of Camlann in which both Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) fell, and there was a plague in Britain and Ireland."   Beside a stream at Slaughterbridge, lies a 6th Century stone. It is often believed to have been laid here to signify the place where King Arthur met Mordred for their final conflict.   The fierce battle turned the small stream red with blood. Arthur and Mordred fought in hand-to-hand combat across the bridge. Arthur finally slew Mordred, but, he himself had received a fatal wound from Mordred's poisoned sword. His end was nigh.     The Stone carries a Latin inscription and rare Ogam, an ancient Celtic script.   The Ogham dates the Stone to around the 6th century and indicates the presence of Southern Irish people in North Cornwall at this time. The onward migration of people from Cornwall in to Brittany, moving ahead of the Saxon invaders (a decisive battle between the Saxon King Egbert and the Celts was also fought over the same land at Slaughter Bridge in the 9th century), was a likely vehicle for the transmission of stories important in Celtic culture.   It was this oral tradition that eventually inspired the pen of Chretien de Troyes, the greatest of the French Arthurian Romance writers of the 12th century. The inscriptions on this Stone are around 1500 years old. It was first written about by Richard Carew when he published The Survey of Cornwall in 1602 and observed that “ the olde folke thereabouts will shew you a stone, bearing Arthur’s name….”   And later, in 1848, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson stood on this spot and gained inspiration to write The Idylls of the King.