Glastonbury Fright

Thursday 14 July 2005. I'm in Glastonbury. It's later afternoon, starting to go dark and I'm at Weston-Super-Mare for a workshop on the following day.

I walked up towards the Tor but it was a bit too far away and if I had gone it would have been dark before I'd have got down again.

The path was steep in places and wasn't always as well-defined as this. To be honest, I wasn't even sure this was the right path, though it was going in the right direction... up...

This is as far as I got. I had no torch to come back in the dark and there was no lighting and the path led through some thick undergrowth.

Going back down was to get more exciting though not necessarily for the right reasons...

I retraced my steps and as I came down the narrow steep path, some animal snarled as I passed. I've no idea what it was but it sounded exactly like a large cat (as in leopard not a big tabby!) and I was somewhat nervous as I carried on! I still don't know what it was. I don't know what noise a badger might make - or even whether badgers might have a go at you if you stray to close to their sett, but it certainly wasn't anything as small as a hedgehog and I've never heard any domestic animal make a noise like that. Was the Beast of Bodmin on its holidays perhaps?

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A Weekend in Somerset, 23-25 May 2015

A few articles set around a weekend visit to Somerset during which we met up with old friends not seen for some time and visit Glastonbury, Cheddar and Wells.

Click each picture for the associated article. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index.

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The Chalice Well at Glastonbury

Sunday 24 May 2015. We waited until the rain had died down a little and then braved the weather to walk to the Chalice Well.

On the way up towards the well we had this excellent view of Glastonbury Tor with the tower of St Michael, dedicated to the Archangel Michael.

The Chalice Well gardens are built around the well where legend has it that the Holy Grail was placed when Joseph of Arimathea brought it to England. There is of course no actual proof that there was an actual chalice at all, never mind that it was brought all the way from the Holy Land and placed here. But over the centuries the tradition grew and is linked with the legend that Joseph of Arimathea came here as a merchant. We have already seen the Glastonbury Thorn that is said to have grown miraculously from his staff. The gardens are run by a trust and there is an admission charge.

The actual well sits at the top of a garden that has been landscaped around the spring that feeds the well and cascades down the gardens via a series of cascades, falls and pools. It has to be said that it attracts some strange people (I'm not referring to anyone in the photo). The first time I visited around 30 years ago, someone was sitting in a robe running a pestle around the rim of a brass mortar that was emitting what to them was no doubt a spiritual soothing sound, but to me was totally annoying...

The water here comes from the spring and can be drunk. I ignored the glasses though and cupped my hand under the spring to taste the water. It was quite nice tasting with little of the sour metallic taste of a high mineral content, though the red colour of deposited minerals shows there is some present.

The Holy Grail has been the subject of so many legends and quests down the centuries that it is easily latched onto by the pseudo spiritual. Glastonbury abounds in hippies. I was 13 in 1967 and then hippies were people from my age up to late twenties who liked bright clothes and music and perhaps drugs, though very few people I came across ever went that way.

I grew out of wanting to be a hippy around the age of 17 or 18. By contrast it seems that today's hippies are all aged from 40 to late 60s and far from peace and light, colourful clothes and care for others, it seems now to be more about pseudo spiritualism, being as scruffy and appearing as unwashed as possible... Floaty cheesecloth has been replaced by leather jackets. Glastonbury is full of shops offering "Tibetan Sensory Massage" and anything to do with fairies and elves and that part of the town came across a little (if I can be blunt) as being up its own backside... I imagine that many of the inhabitants don't feel much affinity with this aspect of the town either, though it is well established now.

It's obviously enough of a problem for the entrance of the gardens to display a message forbidding "group rituals"... In 2006 there was a clash in the town between local pagans and an association of young catholics who threw salt in the face of pagans with shouts of "You will burn in Hell, witches!" The problems are not always caused by the pagans...

This did bring a rather ironic smile to my face though. The Healing Pool. You can paddle in it but the sign warns it is slippery and they are not responsible for any (my words) injury caused by the healing pool...

We had climbed down from the well to the final terrace of the garden. There are lots of benches to sit on and for anyone into plants and gardens it would be worth a visit for the well-landscaped presentation alone.

I have to admit I didn't feel one little bit spiritual whilst there, despite others clasping the sides of their faces and rocking about. The Holy Grail or chalice legend seems to have its origins in the Norman period, 1100-1200 years after Christ and some 650-750 years after the time of the earliest Arthurian mentions. There are many many claims for its location and more recently a totally different interpretation of its nature based on the similar sound of the Old French terms "san gréal" (holy grail) and "sang réal" (royal blood).

A lot of thought and effort have gone into the garden, its sculptures, landscaping and planting (which includes at least one cutting from the Glastonbury Thorn). The mysticism, spiritualism and just about all other manner of isms were a bit lost on me...

Links

The Chalice Well Trust: www.chalicewell.org.uk

Somerset Weekend Index

Glastonbury Abbey

Sunday 24 May 2015. Mary and Rod at the White House B&B had warned us that the road through the village of Dulcote was due to be closed from 9:30am due to a running event, so we opted for a fairly early (and mouth-wateringly huge and lush!) breakfast in order to be able to get the car out and away. We drove a short distance to Glastonbury and went into the famous abbey.

We found some sort of event taking place. After paying and starting out in the small museum there was a woman dressed in the costume of a medieval peasant standing looking at us but not saying anything. "Are you real?" I asked pleasantly, not wanting ghosties phasing through me just after eating Mary's massive breakfast - it would put me right off... Anyway... she was real!

The two eastern piers of the abbey's crossing. The western piers have both fallen and only a single stone foundation exists of them. The majority of the abbey buildings have been lost, but there are some quite spectacular things to see here.

The main Abbey church seen from the chancel. The chained area marks where the High Altar once stood. Seen between the piers is the Lady Chapel, of which more later. Beside the Lady Chapel, in 1191 the monks of the abbey claimed to have unearthed the body of a huge man with his wife in a coffin made from a single hollowed out oak tree trunk. They announced that it was King Arthur and Guinevere his queen. This has to be set against the fact that the abbey had burned down in 1184 and they were desperate to have the money for rebuilding that hordes of pilgrims would bring.

The sign reads: "Site of King Arthur's tomb. In the year 1191 the bodies of King Arthur and his Queen were said to have been found on the south side of the Lady Chapel. On 19th April 1278 their remains were removed in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor to a black marble tomb on this site. This tomb survived until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539."

To the east of the abbey, the grounds contain areas of protected wild flowers and an arboretum. Even such a committed non-gardener as myself, whose most exuberant uttering on looking at the most luxurious flower specimen would be "that's nice..." could enjoy the walk through trees, past shrubs and signs warning of badger setts and mole holes. Despite some rather dullish weather, we walked around the entire perimeter.

The abbey pond. Fish were spawning and causing swirls and splashes in the water as they broke the surface in their mating.

A number of people were breaking camp in this area, having spent the night under canvas, or at least under some sort of thin material with a long chemical name, whatever it is they make tents with these days. They were happily calling to each other in German or Dutch or some other language that was beyond me, saying things like "If you go for a dip in the pond, dear, don't come back with your shorts full of pond weed like yesterday..."

We are returning back down towards the visible bits of the abbey again. This is the view from the south side of the abbey showing the Bishop's Kitchen towards the left.

This is by far the best preserved building of the abbey and is one of the best preserved of all medieval kitchens in Europe. It was built as part of the abbot's house, during the tenure of Abbot John de Breyton (1334-42).

Inside are little tableaux set out to show how the kitchen might have appeared during medieval times. I suspect a great many people might have been running about and working here! This was a preparation area, not a dining area. In another corner were little waxwork roasting porkers, complete with wounds from arrows, skewered above a "fire" which does glow and emits little gasps of "smoke" and also a bacon smell!

A glance up a chimney though reveals a mass of spiders' webs who wouldn't have hung about so much when fires really did blaze below! In yet another corner a deep oven is set into the wall. Bread would have been a staple of the monks' diet, though no doubt in the Bishop's House a rather more splendid fare was available.

We exited the Bishop's Kitchen on the opposite side to which we entered and a fragment of masonry allowed me to climb to a railed area for an elevated viewpoint.

Unfortunately the Bishop's House has not fared so well as the kitchen. But we do know from archeological evidence that there was a sumptuous guest house attached to it that was built for the royal visit of King Henry VII - a king who had claimed his throne in battle against Richard III and who spent the rest of his life watching for and imagining acts of vengeance and treachery on every side. It would have been much safer to have made a fuss of him with a huge welcome!

Here we are looking north towards the Lady Chapel across what was a cemetery - the cemetery where the grave of King Arthur and Guinevere was found, buried at a great depth between two pyramid structures. The female skeleton still had long blonde hair attached to the skull but it disintegrated on being touched. A lead cross lay over them according to the records with an inscription that brooked no doubt: "Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia" - "Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon".

1194 is 641 years after the claimed date for the Battle of Camlann in which Arthur was reportedly slain. The find is almost directly comparable to the 21st century finding of the burial of King Richard III, in that very similar amounts of time passed between burial and discovery. Yet the monks at Glastonbury had no sophisticated tests to verify the identity of the remains, nor cameras to record it. Their search is sometimes reported as being at the behest of King Henry II following his interpretation of a tradition told to him by a Welsh bard and sometimes as having been ordered by the Abbot Henry de Sully.

The bones of whoever it was they claimed to have dug up were lost forever when Henry VIII threw his hissy fit at the Pope and Catholicism and destroyed all evidence that might have remained. The tomb and its contents have never been heard of since the Dissolution. The Abbot at the time, Richard Whyting tried to stop the desecration and for his efforts was taken on 15 November 1539 to the nearby Tor and there was hung, drawn and quartered.

On the interior walls of the Lady Chapel, built very soon after the finding of the Arthurian remains, there are still traces of paint from a very sumptuous decoration that adorned the entire interior with colour and design. There are also traces of ancient graffiti...

The Glastonbury Thorn. Or rather, one of the thorn trees, said to have originated from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, the uncle of Jesus Christ who donated his own tomb to hold the body of Christ after the Crucifixion. It is said he stopped to rest on Wearyall Hill above Glastonbury and when he awoke next morning his staff, which he had pushed into the ground, had taken root and burst into blossom. This is one of several trees in Glastonbury grown from cuttings taken from the tree on Wearyall Hill.

We left the abbey and looked for somewhere to sit down for a coffee. There are lots of places available but I do have a liking for the more traditional tea rooms and we found one called "The Abbey Tea Rooms". We went in, sat down, ordered and got a coffee and sat watching the Heavens open...

Links

Glastonbury Abbey: www.glastonburyabbey.com
Glastonbury Abbey Shop: www.glastonburyabbeyshop.com
The Abbey Tea Rooms: abbeytearooms.co.uk
King Arthur (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur
King Arthur (BBC History): www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/arthur_01.shtml
King And King To Be (Kindle book by this blog's author): www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008BL7HUG
Other articles referring to King Arthur: on this blog

Somerset Weekend Index

1990 Travels

The other day I gave you a brief glimpse of West Kennet Long Barrow from a trip we took over the Spring Bank Holiday in 1990.

Over that long weekend we called to see the Roman baths at the city of Bath in Somerset. We've been there several times over the years but the Great Bath, with the green tint to the water, caused by minerals in the hot springs that feed the bath is always a spectacular sight.

Also on display is the actual spring. I've forgotten just how many gallons gush out of the ground per day but it's a lot and it comes at a constant 40+ degrees of heat.

The Romans called Bath "Aquae Sulis" and it was much later that the British called it Bath after the Baths. Having done something similar at the spot where the Romans left all their rubbish we would have had a major city called Dump...

We also called at Glastonbury, calling to see the well where one legend has it the Holy Grail, used at the Last Supper by Jesus rested for a while as Joseph of Arimathea brought it to this country. There is even a legend that the boy carpenter Jesus was brought here by that merchant - the legend being the inspiration for that most moving hymn, Jerusalem.

"And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen"

Glastonbury is known mostly for the music festival these days, but also here is an ancient abbey with a grave that is claimed as being that of King Arthur. The fact that it was discovered and caused a mass inrush of pilgrims bearing monetary gifts just after the 12th Century monks had managed to burn down the abbey and needed a swift restoration fund does however mean you have to be a little cynical of their good fortune...

The abbey has some fairly ancient graffiti to show too - this example dating from 1719!

All the photos from this holiday are available as a set at Flickr.