Dictionary:

Glastonbury

  (glăs'tən-bĕr'ē)

A community of southwest England south-southwest of Bristol. There are extensive remains of an Iron Age village nearby. Glastonbury is the traditional site of King Arthur's Isle of Avalon.

Town in Somerset, SW England. Population: 7,000. It is the legendary burial place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere and the site of a ruined abbey held by legend to have been founded by Joseph of Arimathea.

Glastonbury, a Somerset market town, is distinguished by a conical hill, Glastonbury Tor. Noted for its Iron Age lake village settlements, its magnificent medieval Benedictine abbey was a centre of pilgrimage, inspired by a complex of legends about Arthur, Joseph of Arimathea, and the Holy Grail. A monastery existed here at least from the 6th cent. At the abbey's dissolution (1539), Abbot Whiting was hanged on the Tor.

The prestige of Glastonbury Abbey is based on medieval legends. The earliest, in the late 10th century, is a claim that the first church on the site (which actually is no older than the 7th century) predated the arrival of the earliest missionaries. By the 13th century, it was being said that this had been built in AD 63 by twelve disciples of Jesus, led by Joseph of Arimathea. Simultaneously, a secular legend developed, namely that Glastonbury was the mysterious Avalon to which Arthur was taken. In 1191, at the request of Henry II, the monks dug between two tall stone shafts in their graveyard, and found a hollow oak deep in the earth, containing the bones of a gigantic and much wounded man, and of a woman whose golden hair crumbled to dust as soon as someone touched it. Fixed to a stone in the grave was a lead cross saying (in Latin) ‘Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife, in the Isle of Avalon’.

The discovery was useful to the Abbey, hard pressed for funds after a fire in 1184 had destroyed many of its buildings and all its relics; it may also have had a political aspect, discrediting the Welsh and Breton tradition that Arthur had never died. The bones were laid in a black marble mausoleum before the high altar, where they remained till the Abbey was destroyed at the Reformation. The lead cross survived the destruction; Camden's Britannia (1590) includes a sketch of it, with a shorter inscription omitting Guinevere, but the object itself is thought to have been lost in the late 17th century. A cross found in 1982 at Forty Hall, Enfield (Essex) was probably a replica; the finder refused to reveal where he had rehidden it (The Times (15 Jan. and 22 Mar. 1983)).

Glastonbury Tor was said in a 16th-century Welsh life of St Collen to be a fairy hill, inside which lived a sinister lord of the Otherworld called Gwyn ap Nudd, who also figures in Welsh Arthurian tales. The Tor is topped by a ruined church, and the terracing along its slopes might possibly be a maze. On the slopes is a Holy Thorn, descendant of the original one which stood near the Abbey in 1500.

In modern times the reputation of Glastonbury has grown greatly. Both Roman Catholics and Anglicans hold services and pilgrimages at the Abbey; the spring near the Tor associated with the Grail legend and used as a spa in the 18th century is now a centre for pilgrimage and healing, tended by the Chalice Well Trust; in the 1930s, the artist Katherine Maltwood claimed that the landscape of a ten-mile area south-east of Glastonbury formed patterns representing the Zodiac. The whole New Age movement of ‘alternative’ mysticism sees Glastonbury as a major spiritual centre.

Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.

• Rahtz, 1993
• A. Gransden, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27: 4 (1976), 337-58
• Hutton, 2003: 59-85

Small town in Somerset with ruined medieval abbey that has extensive Arthurian associations; one of several candidates as the model for both Avalon and Camelot. Artefacts testify to Celtic settlement in the La Tène era, but Glastonbury was also the site of the oldest British Christian community. Known as Ynys Wydrin/ Gutrin/ Witrin [glass island] through a fanciful etymology in early Welsh and also as Ynys Afallon [apple island] in Modern Welsh.

Bibliography

• John Scott, The Early History of Glastonbury (Woodbridge, UK, 1981).
• R. F. Traharne, The Glastonbury Legends (London, 1967)

A town in Somerset, England, that has become the focus of romantic legends of both Paganism and Christianity. It is situated among orchards and water meadows in the fen country surrounding Glastonbury Tor, a hill on what was once an island. Although there is an old Christian chapel on the Tor, Celtic legends state that this was the entrance to a pagan underworld, home of the fairy folk. The ruined abbey at Glastonbury is associated with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea, who is said to have brought the Holy Grail to the Vale of Avalon and planted a staff in the ground, which grew as a thorn, flowering on Christmas Eve.

The Glastonbury thorn actually existed until Reformation times, when it was destroyed, but varieties exist in other parts of Britain. Glastonbury is also believed to be the resting place of King Arthur.

During the early decades of this century, Frederick Bligh Bond received a number of messages—published as the Glastonbury Scripts —that directed his excavations of the abbey. In the 1920s, Katherine Maltwood began to examine reports that the land around Glastonbury was laid out as a giant horoscope, which became known as the Glastonbury zodiac. More recently Glastonbury became the home of magician Dion Fortune.

This "power complex" of traditions and legends has attracted many young people to Glastonbury as a pilgrimage center in the contemporary occult and mystical revival. New mythologies crossed with the old as thousands of young pilgrims spend magical weekends at Glastonbury, combining flying saucer cults, Hare Krishna incantations, and rock music with legends of King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea.

Glastonbury is now regarded as a power center of the New Age of Aquarius, and a community magazine, Torc, has been founded to further knowledge of Glastonbury and its associations. (Address for subscription information: 3 Jacobs Close, Windmill Hill, Glastonbury, Somerset, U.K.) In 1989 the "alternative" community of Glastonbury, through an organization called Unique Publications, launched a journal, The Glastonbury Gazette.

For a skeptical account of the Glastonbury legends, see Christianity in Somerset (1976), by Robert Dunning. Dunning claims that all the stories of King Arthur and St. Joseph were twelfth-century fabrications used to attract funds for the rebuilding of the abbey.

Sources:

Ashe, Geoffrey. The Quest for Arthur's Britain. London, 1968.

Greed, John A. Glastonbury Tales. Bristol, England: St. Trillo Publications, 1975.

Howard-Gordon, Francis. Glastonbury: Maker of Myths. Glastonbury, England: Gothic Image, 1982.

Lewis, Lionel. St. Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury. London: James Clarke, 1955.

Michell, John. New Light on the Ancient Mystery of Glastonbury. Glastonbury, England: Gothic Images Publications, 1990.

Reiser, Oliver L. This Holyest Erthe: The Glastonbury Zodiac and King Arthur's Camelot. Bedford, England: Perennial Books, 1976.

Treharne, R. F. The Glastonbury Legends. London, 1967.

Williams, Mary. Glastonbury: A Study in Patterns. Hammer-smith, England: Research into Lost Knowledge Organization, 1969.

For other uses, see Glastonbury (disambiguation).

For the Rock Festival, see Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury
Glastonbury shown within Somerset
Population	8,800
OS grid reference	ST501390
District	Mendip
Shire county	Somerset
Region	South West
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	GLASTONBURY
Postcode district	BA6
Dialling code	01458
Police	Avon and Somerset
Fire	Devon and Somerset
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	Wells
European Parliament	South West England
List of places: UK • England • Somerset

Coordinates: 51°′″N 2°′″W / 51.1485, -2.714

Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the Somerset Levels, 50km (31 miles) south of Bristol. The town has a population of 8,800 (2002 estimate). It is in the Mendip district.

The town is known for its history, including Glastonbury Abbey and Glastonbury Tor, the many myths and legends associated with the town, and the Glastonbury Festival which takes place in the nearby village of Pilton.

On 5 May 2003, Glastonbury was granted Fairtrade Town status.

History and mythology

The town is particularly notable for the myths and legends surrounding a nearby hill, Glastonbury Tor, which rises up from the otherwise flat landscape of the Somerset Levels. These myths concern Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail, and also King Arthur. Glastonbury is also said to be the centre of several ley lines.

The Joseph of Arimathea legend relates to the idea that Glastonbury was the birthplace of Christianity in the British Isles, and that the first British church was built there at Joseph's behest to house the Holy Grail, 30 or so years after the death of Jesus. The legend also says that earlier Joseph had visited Glastonbury along with Jesus as a child. The legend probably has its origins in the mediaeval period when religious relics and pilgrimages were profitable business for abbeys. However William Blake believed in this legend and wrote the poem that became the words to the most patriotic of English songs, 'Jerusalem' (see And did those feet in ancient time).

Remains of St. Michael's Church at the summit of Glastonbury Tor.

Holy Thorn, Glastonbury Abbey, Summer 1984. Died in 1991.

Glastonbury Tor from Street.

Glastonbury Abbey.

Joseph is said to have arrived in Glastonbury by boat over the flooded Somerset Levels. On disembarking he stuck his staff into the ground, which flowered miraculously into the Glastonbury Thorn (or Holy Thorn). This is the explanation behind the existence of a hybrid hawthorn tree that only grows within a few miles of Glastonbury. This hawthorn flowers twice annually, once in spring and again around Christmas time (depending on the weather). Each year a sprig of thorn is cut by the local Church of England priest and the eldest child from St Johns school then sent to the Queen to feature on her Christmas table top.

The original Holy Thorn was a centre of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages but was chopped down during the English Civil War (in legend the roundhead soldier who did it was blinded by a flying splinter). A replacement thorn was planted in the 20th century on Wearyall hill (originally in 1951 to mark the Festival of Britain; but the thorn had to be replanted the following year as the first attempt did not take); but many other examples of the thorn grow throughout Glastonbury including those in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey, St Johns Church and Chalice Well.

In some versions of the Arthurian myth, Glastonbury is conceived of as the legendary island of Avalon. An early Welsh story links Arthur to the Tor in an account of a face-off between Arthur and the Celtic king, Melwas, who had apparently kidnapped Arthur's wife Queen Guinevere. Geoffrey of Monmouth first identified Glastonbury with Avalon in 1133. In 1191, monks at the Abbey claimed to have found the graves of Arthur and Guinevere to the south of the Lady Chapel of the Abbey church, which was visited by a number of contemporary historians including Giraldus Cambrensis. The remains were later moved, and lost during the Reformation. Many scholars suspect that this discovery was a pious forgery to substantiate the antiquity of Glastonbury's foundation, and increase its renown.

Also, according to some versions of the Arthurian legend, it was Glastonbury Abbey to which Lancelot retreated in penance following the death of Arthur.

The town today

Glastonbury today is a centre for religious tourism and pilgrimage. Diverse strains of mysticism and paganism co-exist with the followers of its Christian heritage. As with many towns of similar size, the centre is not as thriving as it once was but Glastonbury supports a remarkable number of alternative shops. The outskirts of the town include a DIY shop and the slow redevelopment of a former sheepskin and slipper factory site, once owned by Morlands. Although the redevelopment has been slow, clearance of the site has begun with a dramatic change to its appearance.

Glastonbury received national media coverage when, in 1999, cannabis plants were found in the town's floral displays.

The ruins of the abbey are open to visitors; the abbey had a violent end during the Dissolution and the buildings were progressively destroyed as their stones were removed for use in local building work. The remains of the Abbot's Kitchen (a grade I listed building.^[1]) and the Lady Chapel are particularly well-preserved. Not far away is situated the Somerset Rural Life Museum, which includes the restored Abbey Barn.^[2] Other points of interest include St. John's Church, the Chalice Well, and the historic George and Pilgrims Inn,^[3] built to accommodate visitors to the Abbey.

The walk up the Tor to the distinctive tower at the summit (the partially restored remains of an old church) is rewarded by vistas of the Mid-Somerset area including the Levels, drained marshland. From there, 150m above sea level, it is easy to appreciate how Glastonbury was once an island and, in the winter, the surrounding moors are often flooded, giving that appearance once more.

The local football side is Glastonbury F.C.

Local people

• The writer Matthew Squire was born in Glastonbury.
• King Arthur and Guinevere were supposedly buried at Glastonbury Abbey
• Gary Stringer, lead singer of Reef, attended St Dunstan's school in Glastonbury for a brief period.
• The occultist and writer Dion Fortune lived and is buried in Glastonbury.
• The writer and historian Geoffrey Ashe, known for his works on local legends, lives in Glastonbury, in the house that had once belonged to Dion Fortune.
• The juggler Haggis McLeod and his wife Arabella Churchill

Transport

The Glastonbury Canal ran just over 14 miles through two locks from Glastonbury to Highbridge where it entered the Bristol Channel in the early 1800s, however this became uneconomic with the arrival of the railway.

Glastonbury and Street was the biggest station on the original Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway main line from Highbridge to Evercreech Junction until closed in 1966 under the Beeching axe. It was the junction for the short branch line to Wells which closed in 1951.

References

1. ^ Abbot's Kitchen, Glastonbury Abbey. Images of England. Retrieved on 2006-11-11.
2. ^ Abbey Tithe Barn. Images of England. Retrieved on 2006-11-11.
3. ^ George Hotel and Pilgrims' Inn. Images of England. Retrieved on 2006-11-11.

• Geoffrey Ashe, King Arthur's Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury, 1957

See also

• Glastonbury Tor
• Glastonbury Abbey
• A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
• King Arthur

External links

• Glastonbury at the Open Directory Project
• Official town council and community website
• map of Glastonbury circa 1900
• Glastonbury, The Somerset Urban Archaeological Survey by Clare Gathercole
• Benedictine Abbey of Glastonbury A History of the County of Somerset: Vol 2: (1911)
• Photos of Glastonbury in 3d (Anaglyphs)

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)