Comment Post

Re: Ambresbury Banks by Gildas on Sunday, 07 January 2007

As a newcomer to the Megalithic Portal, I hesitate to criticise Thorgrim's contributions (though Andy tells me Thorgrim is no longer around), but I think he has repeated a couple of common fallacies here :
1. Ambrosius Aurelianus, whose resistance to the English appears to have begun around 460, may have been a contemporary of Arthur (whoever HE was), but probably predated him by a generation. Badon is dated around 495, when Ambrosius would have been an old man, and if he died in around 520, the date for Arthur's death given in the Cambrian annals, he would have been very old indeed.
2. Old King Cole was probably Coel Hen, who ruled a northern kingdom around the turn of the 5th century - as John Morris says, "Medieval fantasy turned him into Old King Cole, and on the strength of the name transferred him to Colchester".
"Colchester" comes from the Saxon "Colne caester" (the fortress of Colonia).

See "A history of the British Isles from 350 to 650" - John Morris - ISBN 1 85799 286 5 and also the Wikipedia entry under "Colchester"


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