Glastonbury Abbey

Steeped in legend and history, Glastonbury Abbey has to be one of the most atmospheric of all the medieval ruined abbey sites. Situated just off the main high street, where many of the town's shops are selling mystical objects, the monastic ruins themselves seem charged with an almost tangible spiritual energy. Leaving the myths aside, the archaeological facts suggest that there was a settlement on this site as long ago as two thousand years, and documentary evidence confirms that the first monastery was in existence in the year 601. Some 120 years later, the triumphant Saxon King Ine of Wessex, built a stone church that was later enlarged by the great Benedictine reformist, St Dunstan, who ruled as Abbot of Glastonbury from 940 to 956.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Glastonbury Abbey was the richest monastery in England, its annual income only occasionally less than that of Westminster Abbey. With the arrival of the Normans, and the great wealth of the Glastonbury Abbey now established, plans were soon in hand to rebuild the monastery in grand style. Disaster struck in 1184 when a fire virtually destroyed the church and monastic buildings but, with financial help from King Henry II, reconstruction began almost immediately.

Located at the west end of the abbey church, the Lady Chapel was completed within five years and the remains today give a hint of the magnificent Romanesque style building, lavishly adorned with very fine carvings. Building continued for nearly two hundred years, and the finished abbey would surely have portrayed a splendour commensurate with its wealth and power. Sadly, the fate of Glastonbury Abbey was decided in 1539 at the Dissolution, following the execution of the Abbot and two of his monks on Glastonbury Tor.

With the exception of the mid 14th century Abbot's kitchen which remains almost intact, and which has been arranged internally very much as it would have been six hundred years earlier, hardly any visible evidence remains of the monastic buildings. But there are isolated sections of the vast church left to admire.

Looking down the neatly lawned nave of Glastonbury Abbey church today there is just enough of the massive Gothic structure to visualise how spectacular this would have appeared, stretching out for some 550ft (167m) in length. Much of the surviving golden stone fragments of the church display some very fine examples of the sumptuous carving that originally saturated the whole building.

Despite its urban location, Glastonbury Abbey is an extremely peaceful and enchanting place, a place for reflection, and a place to open your mind to the many legends surrounding the Isle of Avalon. Maybe this was the meeting place of the dead, perhaps there is some truth in the tale of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail, and it might even be possible that King Arthur really did rescue his Queen Guinevere from the Tor. Whatever you wish to believe, one thing is certain. You will experience a unique feeling by visiting this most holy of sites, and it must be the same spiritual magnetism that continues to draw annual pilgrimages to these gentle pastures of Somerset.