Sitting just off the southwest tip of Land’s End in Cornwall, England is a plain of water and several small islands called Scilly Isles. Legend has it that beneath the restless tides of the Atlantic Ocean current lies the remnants of an old kingdom called Lyonesse. It is an empire washed with legends involving King Arthur and at one point succumbed to a great flood. Nearby residents note that you can view submerged towers and structures if you look in the correct direction at low tide.
Lyonesse is described as a vast country stretching from St Michael’s Mount to beyond the Scilly Isles that possessed impressive cities, miraculous forests, and up to a 140 villages and churches. According to the Saxon Chronicle, Lyonesse was obliterated in November of 1099 by a natural catastrophe hitting the country. A massive flood had ravaged the land, drowning every single resident and animal except one. This lone survivor was a man called Trevilian who foresaw the waves coming from afar, leaped on his white horse and outrance the advancing waves while seeking shelter in a cave near Marazion. From this point, he watched Lyonesse completely disappear. The Trevilian coat of arms still bears a white horse emerging from the sea.
A separate version of of the Lyonese legend states that when King Arthur was injured in his final battle, the remains of his enemy’s army followed the king to Lyonesse. When King Arthur and his soldiers reached the upper most point in the kingdom, Merlin’s ghost appeared. He summoned the deadly flood which annihilated King Arthur’s enemies. It is said that King Arthur then passed away on the Scilly Isles, thereby associating him and Lyonesse since. It is also suggested that the great mystical court of Camelot may have resided there.
To prove these assertions, fossilized remnants of an ancient forest can be seen at low tide around St Michael’s Mount. Also, around Scilly Isles, walls and ruins can be spotted stemming from the islands’ shores.
Halfway between Land’s End and the Scilly Isles, lie a group of rocks known as the Seven Stones. These group of stones are the remains of a city that local fishermen used to call the Town. Remains of a sunken forest can also be seen around these parts when the tide is low, where petrified tree stumps become clearly visible, which adds credibility to the legend. A witness by the name of Edith Oliver, whom used to be a former mayor of the town Wilton in Salisbury claimed to have seen the towers, spires, and domes of Lyonesse protruding from the waves as she overlooked the ocean from Land’s End.
A major setback is that mainstream materialistic science refuses to accept these claims to support the legends. Those who study the oceans are thoroughly convinced that there has not been a significant enough change in tidal height to substantiate this phenomenon within the last 3,000 years. Due to the evidence at the shore edge of the Scilly Isles still adds credibility, even if they try to disprove these old legends.
