Where was the historical Arthur finally laid to rest? According to legend, he was ferried on a boat to be buried on the isle of Avalon.  Like so much in the Arthurian story, the whereabouts of Avalon is a mystery and many locations throughout the British Isles lay claim to being the lost burial site of King Arthur.

Page from the Canu Llywarch Hen, which may reveal the historical Arthur’s true burial site.

In King Arthur – The True Story Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman concluded that the historical Arthur had been a fifth-century chieftain from the kingdom of Powys in what are now the West Midlands of England and Central Wales. The oldest surviving reference to Arthur - in a Dark Age battle saga called the Canu Llywarch Hen (The Song of Llywarch the Old) - actually confirms this. Preserved in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, this old British battle saga, dating from around AD 700, refers to the Dark Age kings of Powys as Arthur’s heirs. More important still, it actually refers to the royal burial site. It names it as "The Churches of Bassa", not only describing the location but also giving details of how a king is buried with his shield, an unusual custom for the time.  If Arthur was a king of Powys then he would presumably have been buried at the Churches of Bassa - but where exactly was this?

Local historians agree that the Churches of Bassa is today the Shropshire village of Baschurch, some ten miles to the north-west of Shrewsbury. In secluded countryside on the edge of the village is the Berth, an ancient earthwork surrounded by marshland and linked to the mainland by a grassy causeway. As the village itself does not appear to have existed in the Dark Ages when the saga was written, the Berth is the most likely original Churches of Bassa site.

Although the Berth covers many acres, the Canu Llywarch Hen provides an important series of clues as to the location of the burial site.

In 1995 Graham and Martin joined forces with actor and adventurer Brian Blessed in an attempt to find the grave of King Arthur for the live British television show Schofield’s Quest.  Together they set about interpreting the saga to pinpoint the exact location of the grave.  In the saga a princess named Heledd surveys the site as she laments the death of the king:

The Churches of Bassa are his resting place...

I shall mourn till I enter my oaken grave...

I shall mourn till I enter the steadfast earth…

I shall mourn till I enter circling staves...

I shall mourn till I enter the field's surface...

I shall mourn till I enter Travail's Acre...

Here Heledd says how she too hopes to one day be buried were the king is buried, and we are told where this is - within a circle of staves, surrounding a field called Travail’s Acre.   Graham, Martin and Brian discovered that there was only one location at the Berth which matched this description: an area now called the Sacred Enclosure. The enclosure is encompassed by defensive earthen ramparts which, judging by what is known of other Dark Age sites, would originally have been topped by a stockade of wooden stakes - "circling staves". Within the enclosure is a field, about an acre in size, which has to have been the Trevail's Acre in the saga.

The television company, in association with leading Shropshire archaeologist Dr Roger White, arranged for a geophysics survey of the area to see if there really was an ancient grave where the poem seemed to suggest.  Geophysics enables archaeologists to see what lies below the ground without digging. Sophisticated electronic equipment produces a three dimensional computer-generated image of what lies buried and can also detect and map areas of soil excavated and refilled in the remote past.

The geophysics results showed that a circular ditch had been dug and filled in again, right in the middle of the enclosure.  It had been some six feet deep and appeared to be a burial ditch consistent with those of the post-Roman era. More remarkably, at the center of the ditch was a diamond-shaped piece of metal, probably the central boss of an ancient shield. The survey had not only revealed evidence of an ancient burial where the poem said there would be one, but it also revealed evidence that the body had been buried with a shield, just as the saga described.  Could this have been the grave of the historical King Arthur?

Unfortunately – or fortunately – depending on which way you look at it – the site is a listed monument and cannot be excavated without the permission of English Heritage.  Believing that it would harm the site, English Heritage refused to allow a dig to determine who really was buried in Travail’s Acre.

If the Canu Llywarch Hen is right, then the real site of Avalon may in fact be the Berth. Until the area around it was drained to claim arable farmland, it was surrounded entirely by water. All that now remains of this huge lake is Berth Pool, just to the east of Trevail’s Acre. If this was where the historical King Arthur was buried it would be indeed be an apt site for his grave. Like the mystical Isle of Avalon, it had been a remote and secluded island at the time he is said to have lived.

Click >here to see a virtual reconstruction of what the Berth may have looked like in King Arthur’s time.

Martin Keatman (left) and Roger White at the Berth discussing the possibility of excavating the likely burial site.