Ancient castle discovered near mythical birthplace of King Arthur

Archaeologists have discovered a mysterious ancient castle near the mythical birthplace of King Arthur.

A team of diggers found the remains of a huge palace which was built during the Dark Ages, an era when the Roman Empire had retreated from Western Europe and Britain was little more than a plague-ravaged backwater.

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This particular castle boasted one metre wide walls and appears to have been built in the sixth century by the rulers of a kingdom called Dumnonia.

Its location in Tintagel, Cornwall, places it at the centre of Arthurian legend.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, a medieval historian, claimed Tintagel was the birthplace of King Arthur in his book "Historia Regum Britannae" - a famously unreliable history of British monarchs.

“The discovery of high-status buildings – potentially a royal palace complex – at Tintagel is transforming our understanding of the site,"  said Win Scutt, an English Heritage properties curator covering the West of England.

"It is helping to reveal an intriguing picture of what life was like in a place of such importance in the historically little-known centuries following the collapse of Roman administration in Britain."

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The royals who lived in the newly-discovered castle enjoyed a life of wealth and finery.

Archaeologists found evidence showing they quaffed wine from Turkey and olive oil from the Greek Aegean, using cups from France and plates made in North Africa.

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The palace appears to have been abandoned at some point during the last half of the 6th century or the early part of the 7th - a time when bubonic plague was sweeping across the world.

This could mean the castle's inhabitants fled it in a bid to avoid catching the disease, which made victims suffer a painful death.