King Arthur's Round Table is a Neolithic henge in the village of Eamont Bridge in the English county of Cumbria, around south east of Penrith. It is 400 metres from Mayburgh Henge. The site is free to visitors and is under the control of English Heritage.
Description
King Arthur's Round Table is a henge situated in a field next to the A6 road in the village of Eamont Bridge, south of Penrith, Cumbria. The northern part of the henge is now covered by the B5320 road and the Crown Hotel, while the A6 road has encroached on the eastern part. The larger Mayburgh Henge is just 400 metres to the west, and the fragments of the Little Round Table henge are 200 metres to the south. This indicates the presence of a henge complex and possible ritual landscape similar to those at Thornborough or Salisbury Plain.
The henge is around 90 metres in diameter. The enclosed area is about 50 metres across; the ditch has a maximum width of 16 metres; the berm 7 metres; and the bank 13 metres. There appears to have been two original entrances, but only the south-east entrance survives as the northwest entrance has been mostly destroyed by the modern road.
Excavations were undertaken in 1937 by R. G. Collingwood and continued in 1939 by Gerhard Bersu.
In 1988 a geophysical survey was conducted to examine the north segment and the southeast entrance, but the results were directly affected by the 18th–19th century landscaping. There is a barely discernible bank on the northern side 30 metres in length, up to 5 metres wide, but only 15 centimetres high.