[ Mar.2017 ] We heard that in the historical town of Winchester in the south of England, there is the Round Table of the legendary King Arthur and his knights.
So we went there to see it.
I imagined it would be standing on the floor as a table, but there was a huge disk on the wall of The Great Hall which was a part of Winchester Castle which does not exist any more and that was the Round Table.
According to the legend, King Arthur and his knights who were supposed to have lived in the 6th century sat around this table and saw the image of Holy Grail and swore to find it.
It is a legend, so there is not an author, but 15th century writer Thomas Malory’s work “Le Morte d’Arthur” is the most famous one.
Malory seemed to have thought the town of Camelot where Arthur lived was in fact Winchester, because in his time, this Round Table was already there in this city.
And people in those days believed that this table was made in the 6th century when the King Arthur lived.
But unfortunately, the modern technology revealed that the table was made in the 13th century.
The most likely scenario is that Edward Ⅰ who reigned from late 13th century to early 14th century created this table in 1290 for the banquet celebrating the arranged marriages of his children.
In those days, it was popular to dress up as characters from King Arthur’s legend and feast.
According to the booklet I bought there, the diameter of the table is 5.5 meters and weights 1200 kg and it was made of 121 pieces.
It was really standing on the floor as a table originally, but they think that in 1348 when the roof of The Great Hall was re-modeled, it was hung on the wall.
By the way, this Great Hall is the only remaining part of the Winchester Castle.
The castle was built soon after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and kept as one of the most important fortresses for about 600 years, but in 1645 during the English Civil War it was besieged by Cromwell’s army and eventually destroyed.
