Tintagel Castle stands on the island headland at Tintagel on the north coast: a ruin of the thirteenth century with foundations far older beneath it. In Kernewek it is Kastel Dintagel. The castle was built in 1233 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, the Duchy of Cornwall owns the site, and English Heritage cares for it today.
Arthur
Geoffrey of Monmouth placed Arthur's conception here in the Historia Regum Britanniae, written in the 1130s, and the legend has drawn people to the headland ever since. The castle that stands in ruins was built long after the story, as if to give it a house.
Older than the castle
Beneath the medieval ruin is an older settlement: an early medieval elite site, probably a royal residence of Dumnonia, with pottery imported from the Mediterranean. Ralegh Radford excavated here from 1933 to 1938, and the Artognou stone was found in 1998. Later digs, in 2016 and 2017, found a palace of the fifth or sixth century. A footbridge to the island opened on 11 August 2019, the year the site recorded 154,996 visitors; in 2022 it was named among English Heritage sites at risk from coastal erosion.
Sources
Last checked: 2026-10-11