Glastonbury August 4, 2007

Midway through the summer I realized with astonishment that when I traveled from Paris to London to Cornwall, I would pass Glastonbury. I bought my train ticket from Paris a day early and made online reservations to spend the night at The George and Pilgrims, a historic inn that dates from the early 15th century. Its stone paneled front and mullion windows, great oak beams, and tightly spiraled staircase were enchanting. It has offered 13 rooms on 3 floors for over 500 years. Wow. I stayed in the Monk’s Cell and breakfasted in this elegant pub.

My brief visit was divided between walking the trail up to the Tor and wandering the Glastonbury Abbey grounds. It is here that my 1999 Lilly Grant, Quest for Camelot, was centered. The novel I began that summer continues to tease me, beguiling me to come out to play when I have work to do. This year’s reason is the writing for National Board Certification. My visit to Glastonbury rekindled the Arthurian flame.




The Tor is a 500 foot high conical hill, whose sides were cut in a rising labyrinth of terraces by Neolithic man 2,000 to 3,000 years B. C. In the era when Saint Patrick was in Somerset, the 400s, a gathering of monks lived on the Tor. It wasn’t until the 1100s that the Saint Michael of the Torre church was built. In 1275 an earthquake destroyed it; Henry VIII cast down the rebuilt structure in the banning of the abbeys in 1539. It was used as a local quarry for stone as were many of the ruins until Saint Michael’s tower was restored and preserved.

The Tor has been called the Gwyn Ap Nudd, the home of the Fairy King who lives in the honeycomb of hollows within the hill. It is a holy place to many people for different reasons. Some say that walking up the terraced way to the top in reflection brings clarity and deep shifts. Pilgrims coming down are often singing and uplifted. The stones scattered on the slopes of the Tor may mark ley lines or align with the stars. This is a spiritual place, no matter the state of the visitor’s spirit.

The Abbey site is that of the oldest above ground Christian church in the world. In the 1st century, local custom says that Joseph of Arimathea retired here in the place where he had traveled years before as a tin merchant. Local history believes that he brought the young Jesus with him during his formative years. Joseph and his companions built a small wattle place of worship, dedicated to his niece, Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The Lady Chapel had a stone church added to it by the Saxon King Ine of Wessex in the 7th century, and St. Dunstan, the 10th century Abbot, increased the Abbey buildings before he left to become Archbishop of Canterbury in 960. The Normans undertook great building projects after the conquest in 1066, but Glastonbury, the richest monastery in England, burned in 1184.

It is said that a venerable monk asked, dying, to be buried between two markers in the old graveyard shortly after the fire. Upon digging in that place to fulfill his request, the monk’s discovered the coffin of a tall big-boned man whose bones showed multiple healed injuries and a fatal skull wound. Their excavation revealed the grave of another, smaller man and a woman whose golden hair still caught the sun. The grave was marked with a cross that identified the remains as that of the Arcturus, the king. Whether or not, the monks fabricated this story in order to cash in on the resulting excitement, they moved these remains on April 19, 1278 in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor to a black marble tomb inside the Abbey cathedral. Glastonbury has drawn pilgrims since its Neolithic origins; the destruction of the Abbey in 1539 on the order of Henry VIII has done nothing to stem the tide. In 1536 there were 800 monasteries, nunneries, and friaries in England. By 1541 there were none. The destruction of the monasteries was a part of the King’s breaking the power of the church and claiming it for himself; it is hard for me to imagine the enormity of the destruction of those 5 years or to see any rational excuse for such destruction.

This charming town is accessible by public bus and by car. The nearby Cadbury Hill, once an Iron Age hillfort and what we call Camelot, is not on any bus routes, so I was not able to return there. I was just lucky to meet a woman in 1999 who dropped me there in the morning and picked me up later in the day on her way to and from a friend’s. This place remains one of the most rich in my summer of listening to the voices of the past.