Tintagel

Tintagel ; Cornish Tre was Venydh
Coordinates	50 ° 40 ′ N , 4 ° 45 ′ W Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′ N , 4 ° 45 ′ W
OS National Grid	SX057884
	Tintagel
	Tintagel
Residents	1782
administration
Post town	TINTAGEL
ZIP code section	PL34
prefix	01840 77
Part of the country	England
region	South West England
Ceremonial county	Cornwall
Unitary authority	Cornwall Council
Civil Parish	Tintagel
British Parliament	North Cornwall

Tintagel ( Cornish Dintagell or Tre was Venydh ) is a village on a rugged coastline in the county of Cornwall in the extreme south west of England .

The name of the place is best known for the nearby ruins of Tintagel Castle , which the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth declared to be King Arthur 's residence in his Historia Regum Britanniae in 1136 . About 700 people live in the village, the community has 1820 inhabitants (2001 census). Until the middle of the 19th century the place was called Trevena , and Tintagel was the name for the municipality and the Oberland. The renaming was done by the postal administration. Tintagel was first mentioned in a document in the Chronicle of Monmouth with the Latin name Tintagol .

history

In late antiquity (approx. 5th to 7th centuries) there was a larger settlement here, which archaeologists interpreted partly as a monastery and partly as a prince's seat. It is noticeable that large amounts of ceramics imported from Eastern Europe were found in the ruins , which indicates very close contacts with the Mediterranean region. The complex was later abandoned under unclear circumstances.

In Norman times, a castle was built in the smaller, nearby village of Bossiney , which probably happened before the Domesday Book was created and thus before 1086. Tintagel and Bossiney were established as districts in 1253 under Richard of Cornwall .

In 1927 was here the Order of the Companions of the Knights of the Round Table (Order of the Fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table) founded by Frederick Thomas Glasscock, three years later he set up for this medal a building called King Arthur's Hall , which now serves mainly as a museum.

present

The place itself presents itself today as a collection of bungalows and guest houses. It is one of the most popular tourist destinations in England. Many of the old houses were demolished in the early 20th century to meet the needs of tourism. Only the old post office, a small, picturesque manor house from the 14th century with a corrugated slate roof, has survived from earlier times. The National Trust has restored the building and re- equipped one of the rooms as a Victorian village post office according to its former purpose . In the multitude of souvenir shops in the town center, practically everything that can be bought points to King Arthur. Tintagel itself does not have its own bathing bay, but Trebarwith Strand is barely half an hour's walk away and is also used for surfing .

One of the most famous buildings used for tourism is the King Arthur's Castle Hotel from 1899, which is now known as the Camelot Castle Hotel . In November 2010, the BBC ran a 12-minute report on the hotel's business practices, believed to be owned by Scientology .

Churches and chapels

The parish church of St. Materiana

The Norman parish church of St. Materiana is a bit away from the village. It was built in the late 11th and early 12th centuries.

The Catholic Church of the Apostle St. Paul (St Paul's Church) was built in 1967. The church became famous thanks to its thirty thousand-piece mosaic by the Swiss artist Hanspeter Steiner . For the 40th anniversary of the church, in 2008, a modern version of Leonardo da Vinci 's Last Supper was hung in the church, created by local artist Nicholas St John Rosse. In addition, people from all over the world visit the church because they want to read the Miscarriage & Infant Loss Memorial Book which is available there, which preserves the names of infants who died from miscarriage , stillbirth or other causes.

Excavations

Important excavations starting with Ralegh Radford in the 1930s on and around the 12th century castle have revealed that Tintagel has a high - ranking Irish Scottish monastery (after Ralegh Radford) or a princely fortress and trading settlement from the 5th and 6th centuries ( after later excavations), i.e. immediately after the Romans withdrew from England. Finds of Mediterranean oil and wine glasses show that England was not an isolated outpost at the time, but traded in high-quality goods from the Mediterranean region. The finds from the excavations are on display in the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro . In 1998, excavations discovered the Artognou stone , which linked Tintagel to the Arthurian legend , although historians do not believe the inscription refers to King Arthur. Further excavations were carried out at the Tintagel cemetery in the early 1990s. In 2016, another excavation started in the area of the fortress hill, which unearthed many artifacts from up to one hundred buildings.

literature

Robert Andrews: The Rough Guide to Devon & Cornwall . 3. Edition. Rough Guides, New York, London, Delhi 2007, ISBN 978-1-84353-807-3 , pp. 343 .
Peter Sager: South England - DuMont Art Guide . 5th edition. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1981, ISBN 3-7701-0744-6 , p. 311 .