Glastonbury

Glastonbury has been a place of sanctity and pilgrimage for several thousand years.

Glastonbury Tor, with its single tower, dominates the area, sticking up well above the flat Somerset Levels. The Levels or 'Moors' are at, or a bit below, sea level.

Early occupation

It is not clear when the Glastonbury area was first occupied. The Sweet Track (dated exactly to 3806 BCE) is the oldest marsh walkway known in the world. It's not far from Meare, a former island NW of Glastonbury. The first people we know occupied Ynys Witrin, or the Isle of Glass or 'seeing', were the Celtic Druids. But Glastonbury Tor is so prominent that, when people first occupied the area at least 12,000 years ago, they will certainly have come here.

Druids

It is said that Glastonbury (at that time an island rising above the submerged Levels) was the location of one of three Druidic perpetual choirs. The other two were said to be on the islands of Anglesey (NW Wales), and Iona (off Mull on the west coast of Scotland). These eternal choirs made music twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. They literally enchanted the land.

Joseph and the first Christians

According to tradition, in 37 AD, Joseph of Arimathaea, an Essene who provided Christ with his tomb and protected him during his mission, came here after the Crucifixion as a refugee. He set foot onto Ynys Witrin on Wearyall Hill, where he planted his Jerusalem Thorn staff and rested his feet from the long journey. The staff took root and sprouted branches, and a descendant of that tree still grows on Wearyall Hill to this day.

Joseph and his twelve acolytes founded and built the world's first purpose-built Christian church here, on the site of the oldest part of the Abbey at the western end. Some even say that Mary Madgelene came here. Hence that the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches recognise Glastonbury as 'the primary church of the West', superior to Rome. Rome doesn't agree.

But before going into all that, let's visit Wearyall Hill...