King Arthur's Round Table, Cumbria
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King Arthur's Round Table is the name of a Neolithic henge in the English county of Cumbria, around 2km south east of Penrith.
The henge is around 90m in diameter with two original entrances of which only that in the south east survives due to modern road truncation. The external bank is 1.5m high with an internal quarry ditch which was 9m wide, flat bottomed and 1.4m deep when excavated in the 1937 and 1939. William Stukeley recorded two standing stones outside the northern entrance although these are no longer visible.
Attempts to turn the site in to a landscaped garden in the nineteenth century have also caused disturbance and created a raised plateau in the centre. A cremation trench was identified in the middle during the excavations in the 1930s. It was 2.4m long. 0.8m wide and just 0.25m deep, contained cremated bone and may have been covered by a stone structure although little remained for analysis.
A smaller henge called the Little Round Table stood 75m to the south but was destroyed in the nineteenth century. The better preserved henge at Mayburgh is also very close by indicating the presence of a henge complex and possible ritual landscape similar to those at Thornborough or Salisbury Plain.
