CAMELOT

I am, at last, after many painstaking years of research able to publish my findings on the history of Barnoldswick. What I have to reveal is probably the most important historical find since the Saxon burial mound at Sutton Hoo in 1939.

It has taken me many hours of research using maps, walking over the site and scouring hundreds of manuscripts in archives all over the North of England.

Once my findings become public the town will never be the same. We will be flooded by TV cameras, newspaper reporters, possibly Tony Robinson and the Time Team will come and will cause more disruption with their excavations than Balfour Beatty and their new water main.

I know it will take some believing but my researches tell me that Barnoldswick is the original site of CAMELOT.

Over the years many places have laid claim to being the site of Camelot, Cadbury Castle being one of them. This is a small village in Somerset some 15 miles South of Glastonbury. All that remains today is a ringed hillfort with evidence of a large castle inside the outer walls. There have been some extensive excavations of the site, and there are detailed reports of the archaeological dig available.

Here are my findings:

By the side of The Greyhound Hotel on Manchester Road there is a street called CASTLE View, now whether this was the site of the castle or you could see the castle from this spot I have not been able to find out. More work needs to be done on this aspect and, if possible, some excavation would solve the problem.

In the oldest part of the town there is a street called KING Street and down by what used to be The Fosters Arms an ARTHUR Street, this is surely more than a coincidence.

On Station Road is a cafe called Genevive. This name intrigued me for years, until the day I found amongst the records of The Duchy of Lancaster a deed from the 14th century (with ref. Lia R.) which showed the owner of a previous building on the site. The name Genevive is a corruption of the name GUINEVERE.

I worked for many years for Rolls-Royce at Bankfield Shed, and for a while actually worked building engines. I did some research into the history of Rolls-Royce at Barnoldswick, most of the engines were named after rivers, Nene, Trent etc. but the name of one early engine caught my eye, one of the earliest engines was called MERLIN, after the wizard.

When I married in 1966 I obtained a council house on Coates Estate on Avon Drive. Every morning I would walk along the road to work and then back again at night and quite a few times I had this eerie feeling surround me of something that was mystical, until one November morning, when the mist clung to the canal, this hand appeared clutching a sword and it suddenly dawned on me that Avon was a corruption of AVALON. This was the place where King Arthur was said to have been taken, when he was dieing, to be healed. There are lots of theories as to where Avalon might actually have been. Some say it was not a geographical place, but a euphemism for the otherworld.

King Arthur's father was called Uther Pendragon, it is from this that we get the old Lancashire saying "Pull the uther one, it's got bells on"

Now this is true, the wood on the left, past the quarry, as you leave Thornton is called Merlinwood

This one is surely the icing on the cake, there is a sign outside the front door of The Anchor Inn in Salterforth that reads, "THE ROUND TABLE meet here every Tuesday at 8 o'clock".