Description : Tintagel (Trevena (Cornish: Tre war Venydh meaning village on a mountain) is a civil parish and village situated on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, England. The village and nearby Tintagel Castle are associated with the legends surrounding King Arthur and in recent times has become a tourist attraction. In the 1st century AD, southern Britain was invaded and occupied by the Roman Empire. The territory of modern Cornwall was assigned to the Roman administrative region of civitas Dumnoniorum, named after the local British tribal group whom the Romans called the Dumnonii. At the time, this south-westerly point of Britain was "remote, under-populated ... and therefore also unimportant until, during the 3rd century AD, the local tin-streaming industry attracted attention." Archaeologists know of five milestones or route-markers in Cornwall erected in the Romano-British period. Two of these are in the vicinity of Tintagel, indicating that a road passed through the locality. Cornish historian and archaeologist Charles Thomas noted in 1993: "So far, no structure excavated on Tintagel Island... can be put forward as a Roman-period settlement, native-peasant or otherwise." Despite this, a quantity of apparently Romano-British pottery has been unearthed on the site, as has a Roman-style drawstring leather purse containing ten low denomination Roman coins dating between the reigns of Tetricus I (270–272) and Constantius II (337–361). This suggests that "at face-value ... either the Island or the landward area of the later Castle (or both...) formed the scene of third-fourth century habitation" even if no evidence has been found of any buildings dating from this period. Thomas also noted that some of the post-Roman finds in the excavations of 1933-38 were close to the wall known as the Iron Gate which guards access to the plateau from the adjacent cove. He suggests that the vessels bringing such goods might have come to unload at this cove rather than on the dangerous beach of Tintagel Haven.
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