Talk:Tintagel Castle

message: Maybe a photo could go here? I must have one somewhere - buried in boxes of old prints - but would require scanning in. Maybe someone else will oblige! David Martland 09:34, 16 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: I don't go much on the Arthurian legends but there is one possibility. If Arthur was indeed a 5th century Chieftan based in Wales and dealing with the Saxon invasion, wouldn't Tintagel have been an almost ideal port to ship to Wales the Cornish tin and copper needed to make the bronze for his war machine? It seems a much shorter shipping route across the Severne than pack trains along the much longer route around the source of the Severne.AT Kunene (talk) 16:03, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it is unlikely that any tin or copper was exported from here as there are no good harbours on this coast (however slate was exported from Tintagel in the 19th century and Bossiney was at one time a small fishing port). For more background information please see Mining in Cornwall and Devon#Roman and Post-Roman periods and Saints' Way (for the route between the estuaries of the Camel and Fowey).--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 16:27, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The recent episode of Secrets of the Dead, King Arthur's Lost Kingdom, mentions the notion of trade at Tintagel, meaning two way exchanges. The buildings uncovered suggest that the old ships did find a good harbor there. Archaeologists have found the pottery from Mediterranean places. They suggest that in return, the ships from so far away took tin mined in Cornwall, or even near Tintagel (the remains of a deep open cut mine were shown briefly). Tin was a metal in demand for making bronze items. This review of the program makes mention of the trade of tin for the fine objects and possibly wine from the Mediterranean places, as well as the Atlantic Coast of France, here. I do not know if there are books that describe what was presented in the program. The notion of sailing all that way only to sell goods, bringing nothing back, seems less likely than two-way trade to me, so I mention it here.  --Prairieplant (talk) 06:38, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This is discussed in the section on Early medieval period.   Ghmyrtle (talk) 07:20, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a source of reliable information Thomas, Charles (1993). Tintagel: Arthur and Archaeology. London: Batsford/English Heritage. ISBN 978-0-7134-6690-4.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 09:41, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I see this sentence at the end of the section on the Early medieval period, "This evidence led him to believe that Tintagel was a site where ships docked to deposit their cargo from southern Europe in the early medieval period." I must have missed it firsst time around. Another Wikipedia article about this area says there is no suitable port. I can fix that other article now. That sentence addresses the fact of a suitable port location. I do not find the word tin or tin mines or anything about a cargo to fill the ships going back home, as payment or barter for the goods coming in. Was the tin trade part of what is said in Thomas 1993? That is not a googlebook, and not readily available to me. The point about trade being a two-way exchange seems important to me, and was that really an old tin mine shown? Were the remarks on the television show based on archaeological work done after 1993? Thank you for your quick replies,  and .  --Prairieplant (talk) 22:34, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: My limited understanding of all of this is that that there has been a good deal of new archaeology and study in recent years, which is very unlikely to be fully covered by a 1993 book or, perhaps, the original comments in this thread from 2012.   For example, here are reports on recent excavations - you may be able to dig out (!) links to useful reports and publications.  But I'm not in a position to advise on what the current state of academic knowledge is, or on what reliable reports have been published.   Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:59, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

text: More looking on google, I see that the BBC aired a television show about this in 2018 with anthropologist Alice Roberts as the presenter; she was in the US show as well. The other huge thing uncovered is the outline of the palace, the buildings where King Arthur's myths say he was born, and in that era. I find lots of news and magazine articles on this, but no journal article. I left the link to the US program as an inquisitive person can still stream it online. The BBC program had King Arthur in the title as well, but the last airing was last year, no airings scheduled. I hope these refs are acceptable until better ones come along. The digs were real, and they really found new information. I think archeologists take time to digest what they have found before publishing, slower than television producers, perhaps. --Prairieplant (talk) 00:38, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The mine next to Merlin's Cave was I think for lead, there are no tin ores in this district of Cornwall. Thomas writes about the cove known as the Iron Gate as a possible harbour. I will refer to the book again and report back.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 01:17, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The legend does not place Arthur's birth here but his conception; it has been distorted into the idea of his birth; and an Arthurian palace here is very unlikely though a seasonal residence of a local chieftain is quite possible.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 01:24, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This contains an account of the mines in this district of Cornwall: * Jenkin, Kenneth Hamilton Mines and Miners of Cornwall in 16 volumes, vols. 1–14 originally published by the Truro Bookshop, 1961 onwards and reprinted by various organisations: ** Pt. XVI. Wadebridge, Camelford and Bude Penzance: Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, 1970:- PP. 57 to 61 cover the history of attempts to open mines in the parishes of Tintagel, Trevalga, Forrabury and Minster (Boscastle) and St Juliot: for copper and silver-lead on the Island (1806 and 1852-54 and 1873-73; described by William Taylor in 1927 as a silver-lead mine; described by Thomas in 1883 as a galena mine). None of this is relevant to the Roman period when tin was only obtained by streaming; hard rock mining was only possible from the industrial revolution and availability of explosives and capital to make shafts and adits.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 14:55, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

text: I am not so interested in the versions of the King Arthur myth, my interest is more about the Dark Ages perhaps not being quite so dark, and all the interesting stuff uncovered, literally uncovered, by the digs in 2016 and 2017, and wondering if the statements in the US television show were on the right track about tin mining in the Roman or post-Roman eras, not the 19th century. I know that others will draw attention to the Early medieval period for the myths about Arthur, but I see that as a way to draw attention to this work, not the most interesting aspects of it. The people who used that palace and left scraps of their meals behind were not the people in the Arthurian legend, I think, but Celtic people living there, the early Britons. Clearly lots of tin was mined somewhere, it is the definition of the long ago Bronze Age, copper and tin. Long ago meaning long before the 5th and 6th centuries after the Roman Empire collapsed; the Bronze Age ended in 600 BC. The image shown was of an open area, not an underground mine. I do not know Cornwall well enough to recognize the place in the image in the tv show. I stumbled upon a reference that describes the 5 year project in Tintagel Castle, including the two digs in 2016 and 2017, finding the outlines of the palace; this reference says a full report is expected in 2021 from the Cornwall Archaeological Unit. Anyway, the link to the PBS television show is streaming now, but I do not know if that means streaming only in the US or beyond. I watched it on regular over the air television. Nothing about the tin mining is in this article, as I see a need for more sources first.  --Prairieplant (talk) 01:27, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  the disused lead mine in on the right of this picture. It sounds as if the television programme is not a reliable source for anything about the Dark Ages (a term which historians deprecate). The early Cornish tin trade is covered by Mining in Cornwall and Devon; to get responses to the 2016 and 2017 excavations will need a search for what archaeologists have subsequently said about preliminary findings.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 02:12, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

text: Call them what you will, the Dark Ages meant little literacy (no or few written records, except in Ireland) in Europe after the Roman Empire collapsed and the various tribes they kept out of their part of Britain and countries on the continent were free to engage in warfare with the locals. That is the story of Britain now, though there is no solid history to back up that story. The discoveries at Tintagel Castle area are yielding new ideas on how Britain was split, with travel from the east easiest on the east side of the island of Britain, the Angles and the Saxons, while the west side of the island had ships from Spain and the Mediterranean Sea, based on what was found there. So far, archaeologists have not found a basis to support that the island was overtaken by warrior Angles and Saxons once Rome fell; the thoughts are more along the lines of intermarriages and cultures combining in those early centuries long before the Anglo Saxon Chronicles were started. I have included the sources I could find in the article, from some Archaeology magazines. BBC Two did a documentary on these findings, as well as PBS in the US, and you might look for the next airing of that programme. The link is in the References for the Early medieval period in the article, if you have been reading the new paragraph I added. All that I read in the Archaeology magazine posts, that same information was in the television show in the US. So I would not dismiss it out of hand as you have done. It was the television show that got me to search for the articles that I did find. What reports other scientists will write, I do not know; many are interested in this work, and the extra work done in labs after the digs ended. --Prairieplant (talk) 05:56, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

text: The Mining in Devon and Cornwall article on Wikipedia shows that tin from Cornwall has shown up in places along the Mediterranean Sea since the Bronze Age. All that lacks now is a specific object in bronze that is from the time after the fall of Rome to have its tin from Cornwall. When such objects are found, then the trade can be verified and not a wild idea from a television producer.  --Prairieplant (talk) 06:19, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: What you have added is of some interest but it does get close to making the article longer than it needs to be. The place to write about the history of Great Britian in the 5th and 6th centuries is Sub-Roman Britain; sea travel in this period is frequently the means of immigration for settlers and raiders from Scandinavia, Britian or Ireland to some other territory. Unlike the later Danish invasions of England these were not large armies.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 15:29, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

text: Thank you for your contributions; it is obviously worth updating with the outcome of the later archaeological work. Some tV programmes can be informative depending on the knowledge of those who make them but the Arthurian legend can be misunderstood very easily. Some historians have located Arthur in the North of England and Southern Scotland rather than in the Westcountry, e.g. Andrew Breeze whose article I found recently. --Johnsoniensis (talk) 10:52, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arthur 

message: https://competitions.malcolmreading.co.uk/tintagel/#concept - bridge competition
https://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/brandalism-at-tintagel-and-this-time-its-permanent/ - English Heritage's vandalism
http://docs.planning.cornwall.gov.uk/rpp/showimage.asp?j=PA15/03150&index=12609845&DB=8&DT=4 - Impact assessment
Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 02:49, 19 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Current events, links for future use

message: Views of minor protest group, which unbalanced the historical nature of the section. Views on the statue, both pro and anti, are already in place.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Serpren (talk • contribs) 02:42, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  statue 

message: I will quote from the journal article "Topographical Notes: III. Rosnat, Rostat, and the Early Irish Church", by Charles Thomas (Ériu, Vol. 22 (1971), pp. 100-106).
:"Attempts to explain the first element as Co. din-, 'stronghold, large fortress, cliff-fort', lack force when it is realised that all the other numerous Cornish place-names with this prefix, not a few of which are recorded before 1145, have retained their initial d throughout. Nor does the second element readily suggest any known Cornish word, or find any local parallels. 
Henry Jenner put forward an ingenious idea, on the quite reasonable premise 'Tintagel' originate in a Norman-French milieu, comparing it with '...a rock called Tente d'Agel, or Tente d'Ageau in the Island of Sark [Channel Isles] which is locally said to mean "the Castle of the Devil"." https://www.jstor.org/stable/30007604?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
As it happens, this site actually does exist on Sark Island, and it is known today as Tintageu. http://www.geograph.org.gg/photo/1736
As for a purported Cornish etymology for the suffix "tagel" meaning "constriction", I find no evidence for this.
The Cornish word "tagel" means "wattle" (fleshy appendage). http://www.cornishdictionary.org.uk/browse?field_word_value=tagel&=Apply
The closely related Welsh word "tagell" likewise means "wattle", or "gill" (of a fish), or "double-chin".
These words do not signify a constriction at all, but rather a flabby fold of flesh. Jacob D (talk) 10:13, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The alleged Cornish etymology for Tintagel cited in the article is spurious. 

message: The difference in the last two edits is to do with grammar: for the adjective "dark age" is correct: similarly here "alternatively carry the kopis, a heavy knife with a forward-curving blade. Dark age warfare transitioned into hoplite warfare in the 8th century BC".--Johnsoniensis (talk) 07:24, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dark Age 

message: Having experienced the new bridge am bemused as to why no update to
include mention of this plus a photo? 
Apart from anything else accessibility for the less abled has been magically transformed into a reality.  Please update! 2A00:23C6:998A:6E01:BDD7:49E:849B:7056 (talk) 23:58, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: The new bridge is mentioned in the article, in the "21st century" section.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:53, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The new new bridge! 

message: The excavations in the 1990s aren't currently mentioned in the article, but are detailed in an open access book from the Society of Antiquaries of London: Excavations at Tintagel Castle, Cornwall, 1990-1999.
English Heritage published a new guidebook in 2019, replacing the guide by Thomas and at least one guide published in between. The guidebook features the most recent interpretation of the site and could be used to update this article.
Susan Greaney's 2020 chapter "Where History Meets Legend: Presenting the Early Medieval Archaeology of Tintagel Castle, Cornwall" would also be a useful source.
I can't promise I'll get round to adding information from these any time soon, but thought they might be useful here for other editors interested in the subject. Richard Nevell (talk) 18:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article updates