GLASTONBURY

 Apart from the usually muddy Glastonbury Festival, the town is home to Glastonbury Abbey and Glastonbury Tor.

Glastonbury Abbey is connected with legend to a degree that is unparalleled by any other abbey in England.
The Abbey is right in the heart of the town, and has strong Arthurian links. Indeed, King Arthur is reputed to be buried there. The Gatehouse to the Abbey stands right in the market place. The abbey was built on the site of a much older church.

(below) The first building to be rebuilt was the Lady Chapel, erected on the site of the Old Church in 1184.

Originally the site of a Saxon church, there are records going right back to the late 7th. century. There was a belief that followers of Christ settled here within the 1st century CE and built ‘The Old Church’.

Three distinct phases of Saxon church have been recorded, the last being part of Dunstan’s ambitious remodelling and expansion of the abbey. By the time of the coming of the Normans, the abbey was the wealthiest in England. 

With the coming of the Normans came a change in regime. Abbot Thurstin’s reforms were not welcomed by all of the monks, and tension ended in a bloody battle in which several monks were killed by Norman forces. The Norman abbey, however, continued to flourish, particularly under the rule of Abbot Henry of Blois. 

By the 16th century, Glastonbury’s mythic power peaked, with the final development of centuries of legend - the claim that Joseph of Arimathea was the abbey’s first founder. 
In 1534, the passing of the Act of Supremacy made Henry VIII the head of the Church of England and suppression of the monasteries began. Glastonbury held out as long as possible, but eventually Abbot Richard Whiting was arrested on a fabricated charge of treason and executed in 1539, marking the end for the monastery. 

It is said that Richard Whiting, hoping to appease Henry VIII, sent his steward Jack Horner to London with a Christmas gift. The gift, a pie, had hidden under it's pastry crust, the deeds of twelve manors. On the journey, Jack opened the pie and removed the deeds of Mells Manor, in the village of Mells. 

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said ‘What a good boy am I!"

The Abbot lived in considerable splendour and wielded tremendous power with the main surviving example of this power and wealth to be found in the Abbot’s Kitchen (below), one of only three surviving medieval examples in the world.

(below) The tower on top of Glastonbury Tor can just be seen in the distance

The Holy Thorn which grows at Glastonbury Abbey has become part of the legend of Joseph of Arimathea. According to the story when Joseph arrived in Britain he landed on the island of Avalon and climbed up Wearyall Hill, exhausted he thrust his staff into the ground and rested. By morning his staff had taken root and it grew into the miraculous thorn tree which flowers every Easter and Christmas.

Disaster struck in 1184 when a great fire destroyed most of the abbey including the Old Church. Rebuilding began immediately, with the support of King Henry II.
A few years later, the monks of Glastonbury announced the discovery of the body of King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere, (really?) a claim that helped draw much needed funding, which had ceased with Henry II’s death two years before. (ah, that explains it!)  By the end of the 13th century the church was complete, and Arthur’s bones were reburied in a lavish ceremony attended by King Edward I and Queen Eleanor. 

With its connections to the Legends, the mysticism surrounding it, and the Festival, the little town is full of some very strange shops, selling mystic artefacts and decidedly hippy-style clothing and such.
Still, it is a very pleasant place for all that.

(Above): the church of. St. John The Baptist, in Glastonbury High Street. This church stands on a Saxon site, though the first church on record dates from 1175.

(above) the George Hotel, built during the Middle Ages to house pilgrims.