Pendragon Castle stands as a lonely ruin in the Mallerstang valley of Cumbria, on a green knoll above a bend of the young River Eden. Though the stone keep that survives was raised by the Normans in the 12th century, local tradition reaches far further back and credits its founding to Uther Pendragon, the legendary king of the Britons and father of Arthur — the chieftain who, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's telling, took the name Pendragon, 'dragon's head', after a blazing dragon-shaped comet appeared at the death of his brother.
The story
The best-loved legend of the place tells how Uther tried to dig a channel to divert the Eden and draw its waters around his castle as a moat. The river refused to be tamed, returning stubbornly to its old course, and the failure is remembered in a couplet still repeated in the dale: 'Let Uther Pendragon do what he can, Eden will run where Eden ran.' A grimmer story adds that Uther and a hundred of his men were poisoned here by Saxon enemies who fouled the castle well. Historians find no trace of any building on the site before the Normans, but the name and the old rhyme have kept the founder-king's memory rooted in this corner of the northern hills.