The History and Geometry of Glastonbury Abbey

by Nigel Pennick

from Glastonbury, Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem, ed. Anthony Roberts, Rider 1977

Since remotest antiquity Glastonbury has been recognised as one of the most important geomantic sites in Britain. Under its former names of Avalon and Ynys-witrin it was sacred to the ancient cosmic religion of Druidism and finally to the nascent but flawed revelations of rampant Christianity. The great cosmic temple of the Zodiac, arguably the earliest and most perfect and the first to be rediscovered this century, was connected to sacred sites in the surrounding countryside by a network of alignments and orientations, each symbolically representing their ritually arcane attributes. These are the ley lines that stamp the area with an indelible imagery of sacred geometrical form.

Overlooking (and part of) the Zodiac is the Tor, a major landmark and a major point in the geomancy of southern Britain. Surmounting this commandingly conical hill is a tower, sole remaining fragment of the church of St Michael, last of a succession of so-named churches on this sacred spot. Its dramatic christianisation is recorded in the legendary Life of St Collen, alleged converter of the Greeks. Although abbot of Glastonbury Abbey for five years, Collen became a hermit with a cell on the side of the Tor. Whilst in this austere cell, he heard two men talking about Gwynn ap Nudd (who had an abode on the Tor), remarking that he was King of Annwn and master of the Fairies, an elemental spirit of wide powers. Collen warned them against such heathen talk, but they told him that he would have to answer for such haughty words. Soon the eerie messenger of Gwynn ap Nudd arrived at Collen’s cell and summoned him to the top of the Tor, where he saw a fine castle. On entering, he was taken to Gwynn himself and asked to eat a banquet the Fairy Lord spread out before him. Whereupon he angrily refused and threw holy water over them all, who vanished along with the castle, leaving only grassy turf on the hill’s flattened summit. This legend points to the Tor having retained its pagan sanctity (and possibly buildings) after the foundation of the first Christian church near the sacred Omphalos, a site now covered by the ruins of the later Benedictine abbey.

The Abbey, once of primary importance in England, was ruthlessly attacked in 1539 and subsequently almost totally demolished in order that the stone might be re-used in local secular buildings. The site can claim to be the most sacred in Christian reckoning, as it is the place where, according to tradition, in 63 AD Joseph of Arimathea founded the first Christian church on land given him by the local King, Arviragus. To this ancient wooden and wattle church, referred to as the Vetusta Ecclesia, Faganus and Deruvianus, missionaries sent to Britain by Pope Eleutherius, added in 160 a stone church dedicated to Christ and St Peter. Fragments of quality Romano-British carved stonework, which had subsequently been re-used in a later Romanesque building, dug up in F Bligh Bond’s excavations early this century, probably represent fragments of this edifice.

Joseph of Arimathea’s building, though in a sorry state of disrepair, was not replaced or demolished, but was repaired by Faganus and Deruvianus. In effect this was a second foundation, being an extension and restoration rather than a replacement. In turn St David, in about 540, shortly after the death of King Arthur who was allegedly buried there, founded another church on a different site but on the same axis as that of Paganus and Deruvianus.

In 601 Gwrgan Varvtrwch, King of Dumnonia [Devon], gave the land of Ynys-witrin to the Old Church (ie. the Celtic Church at Glastonbury) under the auspices of Abbot Worgret. This made the whole island of Ynys-witrin into a monastic island. In 633, Paulinus, Bishop of Saxon York, had the Vetusta Ecclesia boarded over and covered with lead in order to preserve the sacred but now rapidly decaying fabric.

The Saxons who conquered Ynys-witrin were already christianised and did not destroy the ancient church, although this was the beginning of the end of the independent Celtic church, direct descendant of Druidism. It was at this time that the name Ynys-witrin was changed to Glastonbury. When Aethelfrith conquered Chester in 605, the total British population was exterminated, including the Celtic priesthood. In 607, the ancient library of the former Druidic University of Bangor, containing thousands of priceless volumes, was burnt. Because the Saxons were Christian this naturally did not mean they were pacifists. Ceadwalla, King of Wessex from 685 to 688, the predecessor of King Ine, benefactor of Glastonbury Abbey, exterminated the total population of the Isle of Wight with the full backing of St Wilfrid, in that those put to the sword were Jutish pagans and were to be replaced by Christian Saxons. What happened at Glastonbury is not recorded although there is evidence that some people with knowledge of the site survived to transmit it to the Saxon conqueror.

In 704 (or, according to some sources, 708), the Saxon King Ine of Wessex founded a new church, demolishing some stone ruins, possibly the Romano-British church of Faganus and Deruvianus, and erecting a totally new building dedicated to St Peter and St Paul. It was during this period that the establishment was reorganised on Roman monastic lines, the remnants of the British Celtic church having died out since the rigged Synod of Whitby in 664. At this time the Vetusta Ecclesia was still standing, as it is recorded that King Ine signed a charter for it in 725. In 794 Offa, king of Mercia, whose name is associated with several major geomantic works (Offa’s Dyke, etc) donated ten hides of land to Glastonbury Abbey.

In 878 the monastery was ravaged by the Danes but the Vetusta Ecclesia was not burnt, almost certainly because of its special sanctity and aura of magical power.

Both Masonic systems of sacred geometry are combined at Glastonbury Abbey – ad Quadratum and Ad Triangulum, fitting for a major omphalos.

In 943, St Dunstan placed the monastery under the rule of the Benedictines, linking all the old church buildings into a large one in emulation of Continental practice. The big Saxon church extended from what was then St Mary’s Chapel (the Vetusta Ecclesia) to a point in line with the outer east wall of the north porch of the later church. It had a divergent axis, the westerly in line with the Vetusta Ecclesia and the easterly on the axial line of the later abbey. This axis is the ley alignment from St Benedict’s (St Benignus’ in reality) through the abbey to Dod Lane and on to Stonehenge. Lack of accurate plans hinder geomantic calculations, but, according to V. M. Dallas’s plan, the main orientation of the Abbey is about 3.5° to the north of east. From the central Omphalos, Stonehenge is 3° 38', so it is probable that the orientation was intended to be 3° 38'. In width the eastern end of the Saxon church was in line with the centre line of the walls of the later church. The monk’s graveyard was raised in level by St Dunstan, who had masses of earth imported from the surrounding areas. A memorial cross of this period was found by Bligh Bond although it is not in the Abbey museum. It was dug up at the extreme south-west corner of the nave just outside the foundations of the great tower.

It is possible that the central Omphalos of Glastonbury, utilised by the Normans for the crossing of the great church, was marked by a stone cross in Saxon times, possibly by a megalith or egg-stone in pagan times. This place may have been considered too holy to be covered by a building, perhaps earlier revered as a powerful pagan cult centre. In the 1912 excavations an egg-stone was discovered. Roughly egg-shaped, the huge boulder measured 3ft x 2ft x 1ft 4in. One side of the egg-stone was artificially flattened and bore a cavity, perhaps a socket for a cross-shaft. In Bligh Bond’s writings he mentions an unnamed friend who remarked "...that such a cult-stone must necessarily have existed at any place bearing the name of Avalon". The stone was carved with small circular holes, parallel grooves, convergent grooves like star points, grooves with X-shaped intersections, chisel marks and "other incised marks of peculiar shape". Being found in the bank by the east alley of the cloister it was not far from the Omphalos, and it had obviously been shifted about. Possibly this stone originally marked the actual Omphalos, and subsequently, on christianisation, had a cross erected in a socket prepared for the purpose. Part of a cross which may have fitted into the Omphalos stone was found in the rubble core of the Norman walls of the nave. It bears fragments of an interlace pattern with the head of a Wyrm or dragon!

Several other cross fragments have turned up, one of them in the wall of a house in High Street. At present some of them are languishing in a sparsely labelled glass case in the Abbey museum, and the only information available on them is that which can be gained from looking at them.

After the Norman Conquest, most major existing churches and monasteries were demolished and replaced with much larger and more elaborate buildings, erected by Continental masons. These buildings were constructed according to the Romanesque system of sacred geometry, Ad Quadratum. However, at Glastonbury, a supremely important site, the geometry shows a more complex system, related to the elaborate landscape geometry of the surrounding areas.

The new abbey, built under the rule of Abbot Turstin about l082, was demolished in 1110 so that a more imposing edifice might be erected. The internal geometry of the later buildings still reflects this structure, as exemplified by the fact that the line where the foundations of the Norman west wall were excavated is defined by the square centred on the Galilee Chapel, five radii from the Omphalos at the crossing.

In 1184 a major fire destroyed the Vetusta Ecclesia and the rest of the building. Reconstruction ensued and the edifice which endured until the Dissolution was finally erected. From the work of antiquaries and archaeologists there has been pieced together the information we have today, including accurate reconstructions of the ground plan from which the metrology and sacred geometry have now been recovered.

Several interesting features emerge, as must be expected for a major Omphalos. The Abbey is extremely noteworthy in that its ground-plan combines both the Masonic systems of sacred geometry – Ad Triangulum and Ad Quadratum – into the one pattern, giving effectively a twelve-fold geometry symbolically associated with the zodiac, both celestial and terrestrial. Numerous important parts, such as the position of all the nave and chancel pillars, are defined by the octograms generated by the system Ad Quadratum. The outer width of the nave and chancel walls, features of the erstwhile vaulting, the limit of the steps of the Edgar Chapel, the transept pillars’ position, the central point of the Galilee Chapel, the outer wall of St Dunstan’s Chapel, the original four-bay chancel (not taken into account by previous analysers of the ground-plan), and even the size of the buttressing on the wall of the cloister next to the church, are all defined by Ad Quadratum, based upon the central Omphalos sited beneath the crossing. From this central crossing is also developed the system Ad Triangulum, which defined the north and south transept walls, the position of the north porch, the doorways of St Mary’s Chapel, the external comers of the crossing, and, by projection to the points where the lines cross circles of Ad Quadratum radius (see diagram), the internal wall of the apse of the Edgar Chapel and the internal wall of St Dunstan’s Chapel. The geometry which defines the positions of several important features around the town of Glastonbury is derived from the Abbey’s geometry.

It is interesting to note that all work done to date has used the unmodified plan prepared by Bligh Bond in 1912. This showed a western aisle to the north transept which Bond believed to have formerly existed at that site contrary to normal Benedictine practice. Subsequent work by 1919 disproved this theory, and Bond published at length the steps which led to the disproof. However, guides on sale at the Abbey today still show the aisle which was disproved by 1919! The plan drawn by V. M. DaBas in the 1920s is accurate as far as this feature is concerned, but sadly ignores the famous apse of the Edgar Chapel.

The dimensions of the Abbey, as in all such buildings except King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (where they were laid down in writing by the founder [the celebrated mystical scholar King Henry VI]), have been subject to controversy. Those who study such matters will know the exasperation of finding three ’authorities’ quoting different dimensions for the same building. The St Mary Chapel is subject to so much dimensional conclusion, its dimensions even having been tampered with by some authors so that their pet geometrical theories will fit, that its geometry must be passed over until a proper, unbiased survey can be published. The plans recovered by F Bligh Bond showed that a 74-foot constructional grid was used to lay out the edifice. Based on the crossing, it accounted for the positioning of several important features of the Abbey, being comparable with the 50-Norman-foot grid at Archbishop Thomas’s church at York. However, Glastonbury Abbey was laid out more than a century before the English foot was legally defined on the orders of King Edward I (1305). Before 1305 this measurement existed as an esoteric constant, but several different ’feet’ were in use as well, namely the Welsh foot, Roman foot, Norman foot (of York), French foot and Saxon foot. The 74-foot module of F Bligh Bond corresponds to the following:

90 Welsh feet
76.3 Roman feet
75.7 Norman feet
69.4 French feet (pieds du Roi)
67.3 Saxon feet

Ninety Welsh feet give the dimensions to Bond’s overall grid as 810 x 360 WF; 9 x 4 squares of 90 WF = 1080 Welsh inches; 810 is 10 WF over a furlong in length, the Welsh foot being a logical division of land measure equal to one-twentieth of a rod, giving 6400 WF in a statute mile or 8000 WF in an old (decimal) mile of ten furlongs.

The 1080 Welsh inches in 90 WF correspond to 1080, the mystic number symbolic of the terrestrial and lunar powers of water as opposed to fire, the moon as opposed to the sun, the people as opposed to the king. The original part of the Abbey, St Mary’s Chapel, is lunar, the Virgin Mary being associated with the moon and opposed to the easterly solar hill Glastonbury Tor, which became St Michael’s sanctuary. The Tor was a holy place where the seasonal beacon fires were lit. This is comparable with the Holy Hill/Solar Site orientations observed by Heinsch, although the angle of deviation is slightly greater than the 6 degrees observed by Heinsch. The number 1080 represents the Holy Spirit, the fountain of Wisdom in Greek gematria; it is fitting for the centre of terrestrial geometry from which the geomantic Knowledge emanated.

The vexed case of dimensions is somewhat resolved by recourse to ancient manuscripts. The diary of Jon Cannon, schoolmaster of Meare (born 1684), stated that the Abbey ruins, including the chapels of St Joseph and St Dunstan, were at one time 638 feet in length. Translated into Welsh feet, this is 775, virtually double the 386 figure found by Kenneth Knight. F Bligh Bond gives the internal dimensions as 580 feet (704.3 Welsh feet), and Janette Jackson gives 581 feet (705.53 WF), so it is reasonable to suppose that the length was 705 WF. The actual integral fabric of the Abbey (ie. nave and choir only) is 80 x 460 WF, giving a width to length ratio of 1 : 5¹/9.

Thus it appears that a module of five WF was used, one-eighteenth of the major grid, in turn one-ninth of the overall rectangle, giving the ratio of module to overall rectangle 1: 162. Modular construction is not unusual in medieval architecture; a five-Roman-foot module was used at Cluny; a four-English-foot module at King’s College Chapel and a twenty-five-Norman-foot module at York. The external dimension of Glastonbury Abbey without the St Dunstan Chapel has been given as 594 English feet. This is equivalent to 144 five-WF modules (12 x 12).

The Abbey has been so mutilated since 1539 that many of its subtler constructions will never be recovered. The internal features of the Abbey church included rises in ground level, still traceable by rises in the level of the lawns, originally accommodated by steps. Steps and a screen existed at the eastern end of the nave and further steps raised the altar area, a progressive heightening of the floor in the manner formerly visible at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. This of course was before the purposeless vandalisation of the chapel in the last decade in the name of aesthetics. The height of the steps at Glastonbury and their number is not recorded. Their function was doubtless symbolic and representative of telluric energy, as at King’s College Chapel, there being no orgone-accumulating crypt at the end of the building.

Combining the systems of Ad Triangulum and Ad Quadratum, the Abbey is also the generative point for an outer sacred geometry based upon a circle whose radius is the distance from the central Omphalos to the site of the erstwhile market cross. The cross is now marked by an inaccurate nineteenth-century replica. This distance is also the point at which the central axis of the Abbey cuts the edge of Chilkwell Street, opposite Dod Lane. From this point an equilateral triangle can be drawn, one side of which cuts through the south-east corner and the main fabric of the church of St John the Baptist. The next side of this triangle cuts straight through the old almonry and defines the eastern edge of the wall of the abbot’s kitchen. The other triangle, forming the magic Star of David (Seal of Solomon) pattern, also cuts through the old almonry and the northeast corner of the Chapel of St Patrick.

The point where the two triangles intersect in line with the transept crossing defines the building line of the High Street. The intersection of the same two triangles on Silver Street defines the building line at that point too. The corner of two inner triangles is also at this point, and the intersection on Silver Street defines the southern side of that street. Also projectable inside the circle are the squares of Ad Quadratum. The square parallel with the Abbey axis defines the edge of St John’s church, and the southern edge of the High Street is defined where the square’s cornet touches it. The other square of the pair marks the fish pond, the transept of St John’s church and the southwest corner of the abbot’s kitchen.

Doubtless the geometry marks other significant points but this has not yet been investigated. Work is now in progress to evaluate the relationship of this geometry to the overall geomantic pattern of the area, incorporating the Zodiac and other sites of proven prehistoric provenance.

Recommended Books

Behrend, Michael, Landscape Geometry of Southern Britain. Zodiac House/Fenris Wolf, 1975.
Heinsch, J. Principles of Prehistoric Sacred Geography. Zodi House, 1975.
Maltwood, K. E. A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars. James Clarke, 1964.
Michell, John. City of Revelation. Garnstone Press, 1972.
Pennick, Nigel. European Metrology. Fenris Wolf, 1975.
Pennick, Nigel. The Mysteries of King’s College Chapel. Cokaygne, 1973.
Russell, Geoffrey. "The Secret of the Grail" in Glastonbury: A Study in Patterns. RILKO, 1969.

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