Architects:Ney & Partners, William Matthews Associates

Year :2019

Photographs :Hufton & Crow, David Levene, Jim Holden

Landscape Architects :Nicholas Pearson Associates

Quantity Surveyor :Faithful & Gould

Local Structural Engineer :HRW Engineers

Planning Consultant :CSJ Planning

Wind Tunnel Testing & Vibration Analysis : RWDI

Structural Engineers : Ney & Partners

Cost Consultant : Faithful & Gould

Geotechnical Engineers : Ramboll

Country : United Kingdom

Spanning a 190-foot gorge and with a gasp-inducing gap in the middle, the bridge follows the line of the original route – a narrow strip of land, long lost to erosion – between the 13th-century gatehouse on the mainland and the courtyard on the jagged headland or island jutting into the sea. So significant was this historic crossing that it gave rise to the place’s name, the Cornish Din Tagell meaning “the Fortress of the Narrow Entrance”.

The medieval scholar Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that this land-bridge was so narrow that “three armed men would be able to defend [it], even if you had the whole kingdom of Britain at your side”. Legend has it that the King of Britain, Uther Pendragon – transformed by the wizard Merlin into the likeness of the Duke of Cornwall – stole across this passage way into the castle where he spent the night with the Duke’s wife, Ygerna, who later gave birth to the future King Arthur. So impressed was Richard, Earl of Cornwall by the Arthurian myth that in the 1230s and 1240s he built a castle at Tintagel, with the land-bridge an integral part of its design.