Tino
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or TENOS, an island of Greece, in the nomarchy of the Cylcades; immediately S. E. of Andros; area, 81 square miles. It is 18 miles long by 8 broad, and is traversed by high mountains, the terraced slopes of which yield wine, wheat, melons, figs, etc. Marble, in block or wrought into various kinds of vessels and ornaments, and silk, raw or made into gloves and stockings, are the chief exports. The chief town, Tino, on the S. coast, is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, has two Roman churches, and a small harbor. To the N. of it is the white marble church of Penagia Evangelistria, a famous resort of pilgrims. TINTAGEL (-tä'jel) HEAD, a cliff 300 feet high on the W. coast of Cornwall, about 22 miles W. of Launceston, and but 6 miles from Camelford-the Camelot of Arthurian legend. Partly on the mainland and partly on the so-called island, almost cut off by a deep chasm from the rest of the promontory, stand the imposing ruins of the castle where King Arthur held his court. His spirit still hovers around the scene of his splendor in the form of the red-legged chough, a beautiful Cornish bird already rare in Leland's time. The oldest part of the existing ruins is the keep, apparently of a Norman construction, but there need hardly be a doubt that a Saxon, and perhaps earlier a British stronghold, occupied the same site. The castle was still habitable in 1360, when we read of its being provisioned.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's 1921 note on Tino, better known now as Tinos, still fits the geography, but the economy does not: the silk gloves and stockings are gone and tourism, with marble still quarried around the village of Pyrgos, carries the island of roughly 8,500 people. The church of Panagia Evangelistria remains Greece's greatest pilgrimage site, drawing crowds each 15 August, the date on which in 1940 an Italian submarine torpedoed the Greek cruiser Elli in Tinos harbour, an act that helped push Greece into the Second World War. The Tintagel paragraph has fared less well: excavations since the 1930s show the standing castle was built about 1230 for Richard, Earl of Cornwall, not a Norman keep, though digs have confirmed a wealthy post-Roman settlement of the 5th to 7th centuries trading with the Mediterranean, and the red-legged chough, gone from Cornwall for decades, bred there again from 2002.
Written for this edition, 2026.