Arthur and Beranburh/Barbury: A Repost of a Past Blog

Barbury Castle and the Ancient Ridgeway

From time to time in the past I'd speculated about a possible connection between Arthur and Barbury Castle, the "Bear's fort", in Wiltshire.  Nothing much ever came of this speculation, however - but only perhaps because I did not push it far enough.  I will attempt to redress this deficiency here.

The year entry for Beranburh/Barbury in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE occurs in 556 - that is before the entry for the death of Ida.

Now, let us imagine that Nennius (or whoever compiled the HISTORIA BRITTONUM) had inserted his Arthurian material between the rise of Hengist's successor and end of Ida's reign.  If so, then both Arthur, whose name was surely related by the Welsh to their own word arth, 'bear', and a Bear's fort battle would be found bracketed by the same annalistic events. In fact, one could go so far as to say that the writer of the HB knew the bear at Barbury was none other than Arthur!  Or, at the very least, he chose to identify a war-leader named Arthur with this particular bear.

Bearing all this in mind (pun strictly intended!), let us take a close look at the historical sequence in the ASC.  Once we have analyzed that, I wish to go over the dating of the Battle of Badon as it is derived from the testimony of Gildas and the Welsh Annals.

Let us look at the early battles in Wiltshire as these are found recorded in THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE.  We begin with the defeat of the British by Cynric at Old Sarum in 552. Four years later a battle is fought at Barbury Castle further north.  However, this battle is, significantly, not said to be a victory.  We are merely told there was a battle there.  In 560, Ceawlin succeeds Cynric (see my earlier work for the reversal of the genealogical links for the Gewissei in the ASC).  After Barbury Castle there are no more battles against the Britons until 571 - 15 years later. And the theater of action has changed: the Gewissei are now coming up the Thames Valley.  In 577, the war theater changes again - this time to the west and north of Wiltshire (including the capturing of Bath).  In 584, there is a battle in Oxfordshire, well to the NE of Wiltshire. We do not return to Wiltshire until 592, when a great slaughter occurs at Adam's Grave near Alton Priors resulting in the expulsion of Ceawlin.  In the next year, Ceawlin perishes. 

From the Battle of Beranburh to that of Adam's Grave, 36 years had passed.  Adam's Grave is roughly 15 kilometers south of Barbury Castle.

The question I would put forth is simply this:  who was in Wiltshire for all this time keeping the Gewissei and the English out?  And is it a coincidence that only several kilometers NE of Barbury Castle along the ancient Ridge Wayt is the Liddington Badbury fort?

I have argued before that the Gewissei battles could be nothing more than an antiquarian attempt to define the boundaries of the nascent kingdom of Wessex.  But if that is so, why are there defeats suffered in Wiltshire?  

As I've remarked before, I do not have a problem with one of the Badbury forts being Badon - as long as we recognize that philologically Badon = Bath.  In other words, we would have to accept the possibility that Badon (British form of English Bathum) was wrongly substituted for a Baddan-.  This is a problem only for modern philologists and need not be applied to early medieval chroniclers.

As for the name of Barbury, it is indisputably English.  The Gewissei who fought there were Irish or Hiberno-British (something I proven by tracing Ceawlin to Cunedda/Coline, with Cynric being Cunorix).  The enemy of the Gewissei at this fort were Britons.  So we can be certain that the name of the place is an anachronism.  The English only later came to refer to the fort as belonging to 'The Bear'.  We have no idea what it's original British name might have been.  A personal English name Bera is not recorded in English, according to Ekwall (see his entry for Barham, Kent, in THE CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH PLACE-NAMES).  

Going on the account of battles in the ASC, there appears to have been some kind of very strong British resistance centered in Wiltshire, an area where we not only find a Bear's fort, and a Badbury, but a place called Durocornovium (near Nythe Farm,Wanborough).  Some attempt has been made to prove that this is a "ghost site", and that the name as we have it is a corruption of the Roman name for Cirencester, i.e. Corinium (Dobunnorum).  I do not find this last argument at all convincing.  In the words of Rivet and Smith (THE PLACE-NAMES OF ROMAN BRITAIN), "the nearest major Iron Age settlement [to Durocornovium] is at Liddington Castle, 3 and a half miles to the south."   R&S render the name 'fort of the Cornovii people.' 

However, the name may refer to a topographical feature.  My guess would be the situation of Upper Wanborough, which lies between Nythe Farm and Liddington Castle. From http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol9/pp174-186:

"Geographically the parish is divided roughly in half, the southern section lying on the chalk downs. The shape of the parish conforms to a pattern found along the scarp slope of the Chalk both westwards into Wiltshire and eastwards into Berkshire, each parish having chalk uplands as well as greensands and clays for meadow and pasture. (fn. 7) Upper Wanborough, around the church, is on an Upper Greensand spur commanding a view north over Lower Wanborough and south over Liddington. The northern half of the parish towards the shallow valley of the River Cole is successively Gault, Lower Greensand, and Kimmeridge Clay. (fn. 8) The chalk scarp rises behind the village, reaching 800 ft. at Foxhill on the parish boundary. Most of the Chalk lies between 600 ft. and 700 ft. Two coombs pierce the eastern boundary between the Ridge Way and the Icknield Way, the larger containing two chalk pits. Below the scarp the land falls gently away to the river, to below 300 ft., and is drained by the Cole, its tributary stream the Lidd [for which Liddington was named], and several smaller streams, providing abundant meadow land and marsh. There is little wood in the parish, although there is evidence of illegal felling during the 16th century. (fn. 9) Stone was quarried at Berrycombe in the 16th century (fn. 10) and marl was taken from Inlands at least from the end of the 13th century. (fn. 11)"

A spur of land or a section jutting out between two coombs could be construed as a "horn of land" and so Cornovium may have been used here in the same sense as it was for Cornwall (Cernyw).  

The interesting thing about the place-name is that Arthur in Welsh tradition - to emphasize this point yet again! - is pretty much always associated with Cornwall.

For the sake of argument, then, let us assume for a moment that Arthur belonged at the Bear's Fort/Barbury Castle, and that he stemmed the tide of English and Gewissei invasion for over three decades.  If this is so, how do we deal with the serious, and indeed, fatal problem of chronology?

The consensus is that Gildas was born c. 500 A.D. (although P.C. Bartram says c. 490).  The date of Badon, which he claims happened on the day of his birth, is thought to be c. 500 +/- 10-20 years.  There really is no way to more firmly calculate the date.  Even the Badon date of the Welsh Annals  has been disputed, primarily on the basis of a difference in the interpretation of calculated Easter Tables and the like.  Generally, a date spread of 510-20 is preferred.

Needless to say, this date range cannot be reconciled with a Liddington Castle/Badbury/"Badon" battle that may have been fought sometime shortly after that of Barbury in 556.  Unless, of course, we can make a case for the Gildas passage having been garbled/mangled or even deliberately tampered with. There is the tendency to rely on Gildas's account, since he was a contemporary.  But Gildas's work is not without its very significant shortcomings.  One of these is the inclusion of Ambrosius Aurelianus as a British war-leader.  I have been able to show that this tradition is in error: A.A. is a reflection of the Gaulish governor of that name, perhaps conflated with his son, St. Ambrose.  Neither were ever in Britain fighting the Saxons (although read: https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/05/why-ambrosius-aurelianus-was-put-in.html). 

Let us suppose this happened: the original passage stated that the Battle of Badon had happened on Gildas's 44th birthday - not on the day he was born 44 years and one month ago.  If Gildas were born in 510-20, 44 years would put the Battle of Badon somewhere between the years 554 and 564.  Remember that the Barbury battle took place in 556.

Had this error occurred early enough in MSS. of Gildas, the word of the saint would have been considered incontrovertible and sources such as the Welsh Annals would automatically merely reckon from his date of birth rather than from his 44th birthday.  And hence the date of the Battle of Badon was temporally dislocated, making it impossible to pinpoint it geographically or determine its military context. [Although see below under the detailed discussion regarding the Battle of Badon, and the associated Endnote, for an alternate possibility - one involving the confusion of three different similarly spelled place-names and the odd reversal of the generations for the Gewissei in the Welsh and English sources.] 

We would still have to figure out what to do with Arthur's battles.  Probably they are to be identified much as I did in THE BEAR KING - with one big difference.   Arthur and Cerdic with his Gewissei would be adversaries at those battle-sites, and we would be confronted with the problem of both sides proclaiming victory during the various engagements. 

UTHER PENDRAGON AND AN ARTHUR OF BARBURY CASTLE

In past blogs, I demonstrated convincingly that Uther, the only personage ever said to be the famous Arthur's father, was none other than St. Illtud (b. c. 470 according to P.C. Bartram).  I decided against Illtud as the actual father of Arthur for several reasons, but chiefly because I opted for a candidate for Arthur who didn't fit into the Dobunni (or Hwicce) model.

But I've recently had good reason to doubt my earlier conclusion.  A recent blog piece written on this subject nicely sets out the difficulty I face when seeking to forsake Illtud for someone else:

https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2024/10/illtud-knight-rides-again.html

The principal problem concerns the perfect correspondence between the Bicknor-Lydbrook origin for Illtud when compared to Bican Dyke-Lydbrook. I have tried my best to ignore this, and to sweep it under the intellectual rug.  But it continues to nag at me and I feel that I ignore it at my own peril.  

If we accept Illtud as Arthur's father, and an Arthur centered at Durocornovium, which fulfulls the traditional Cornish view of Arthur, we must yet again delve into the Arthur battles in a Southern theater.

ENDNOTE: The Problem of the Date for Badon

In the midst of the Cerdic of Wessex battles, there is an action featuring a man called Bieda (with variants Baeda, Beda).  The battle featuring Bieda occurs c. 501, a time that is nearly perfect for the Badon which supposedly happened at the time of Gildas's birth and which the AC has down for c. 516. 

Alheydis Plassmann of Bonn (https://www.fnzrlg.uni-bonn.de/mitarbeiter/wissenschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/pd-dr.-alheydis-plassmann) summarizes the dating of Gildas's ON THE RUIN OF BRITAIN and the most likely date for Badon according to that source (see CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA).  The prevailing view (much disputed, of course, in various circles!) is that Gildas finished writing his work in 547 at the latest.  Taking his 44 years, then, back from that date to the time of Badon, we arrive at 503. This is as close as one can get to the 501 date for the ASC battle featuring Bieda. 

According to Dr. Richard Coates, perhaps the preeminent English place-name expert, the best guess as to the origin of the name Bieda is

"Redin (p. 60) linked it with OE be:odan ‘to command’, though the structure isn’t fully clear. I’ve seen no better or worse suggestion since." [personal communication]

Granted, the Badda/Baddan- element of the Badbury names appears to have a different origin than the Bieda name.  However, my work on the Badbury place-names suggest a similar or identical origin (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/cadburys-and-personal-name-badda.html).

I've made a very good case for Bieda's name being preserved in Bedenham, Hampshire. 

Thus we have a number of correspondences which suggest why Arthur may have been placed at Badon at an early date.  They may be listed as follows: 

1) Cerdic of the Gewissei fights battles to either side of one featuring Bieda of Bedenham.  This battle's date fits the date of the "Badon" mentioned by Gildas.

2) Ceawlin of the Gewissei fights at Baddanbyrig/Badbury/Liddington Castle shortly after the Barbury or 'Bear's fort' battle of 556.  This is a major loss to the Gewissei and their Saxon allies, leading to their total absence in Wiltshire for over 3 decades.  

3) Ceawlin captures Bath in 577.  Badon can be construed from a purely linguistic standpoint as deriving from English bathum.