Writing in his Tours of Wales, published in 1781, the renowned traveller and scholar Thomas Pennant, of Downing in Flintshire, gives an account of various places he had seen in Anglesey, including the following brief but telling reference:

Pennant notes that the hill, a limestone pavement, provides natural defences and that these were enhanced by building ramparts, but it is his comments on the place-name that are particularly significant. In a single sentence he notes that the spot now has an Arthurian name, but demolishes any idea of its antiquity and authenticity. Bwrdd Arthur is tersely and correctly dismissed as a late accretion. Today we might characterise this Arthurianisation of a non-Arthurian Welsh place-name as an example of the persistent popularity of Arthurian tradition in Wales, or with a slightly different emphasis, a reflex of a late, learned tradition ousting a ‘genuine’ native tradition. Here, as so often, we may blame Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose Arthurian narrative first enchanted Welsh audiences in the twelfth century, presenting as it did an irresistible image of a heroic past when, as descendants of Brutus, their ancestors the Brythoniaid or Brythons ruled the entire island of Britain, an image which was to shape Welsh political attitudes and provide virtually the only political discourse for centuries.