The Underground Tunnels of Glastonbury
Ann Pennick
from Glastonbury: Ancient Avalon, New Jerusalem,
ed. Anthony Roberts, Rider, 1977.
Like many other abbeys and cathedrals, Glastonbury Abbey has several lost-tunnel legends associated with it. These were investigated by the psychical archaeologist F Bligh Bond over sixty years ago, but since then little research has been carried out on what is really a rather important aspect of the overall geomantic mystique.
There are four main tunnel legends attached to the Abbey, three of which have been partially verified. The first legend is of a tunnel from the medieval Pilgrims’ Inn (now the George and Pilgrim on the High Street) to a point within the Abbey walls. As the inn was built by Abbot Selwood about 1470, in the time of Edward IV, the tunnel could have been used for secret access to the Abbey by pilgrims staying at the inn.
The tunnel, discovered by Bligh Bond, starts from the south end of the cellar under the High Street and is clear for twenty feet southward until about the centre of the road, where it is suddenly blocked by a brick sewer. It is assumed that it then continues to the Abbot’s Gateway, where there was a porter’s lodge, but this again has not been verified by excavation. Mrs Bilbrough in her diary on 21 May 1918 (quoted in Alan Pea’s Rooms of Mystery and Romance), described a trip into this tunnel:
Off we started on our underground journey down a flight of fearfully steep steps, dark and damp and slippery... We groped our way to where the far-famed passage was, which had a great stone step at the entrance, and was only three feet in height, so that those who used it must have crawled on their knees, resting at intervals where ledges are cut in the sides for that purpose. Fancy going for a quarter of a mile like that, when even a few feet of it made my back ache and my limbs quiver all over from the unnatural strained position.
Another legend which is widely believed is that of the long-distance tunnel leading from the crypt of the Lady (or Galilee) Chapel, under the river Brue to a distant point, possibly to the village of Street, where a passage exists from an outlying building in the grounds of the old manor house. A dog is said to have been put into the tunnel at Street and found his way out at the Glastonbury end.*
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* This tale has quite a few local variants throughout Somerset. Most cogent here is the Mendip story told to Anthony Roberts by a fine old gentleman, the late James Barnard, who farmed between Wedmore and Wells and who traced his family back hundreds of years. This long-distance tunnel myth is centred around two prehistoric standing stones that lie on the side of the Mendip Hills near Ebbor Gorge. The megaliths are called the Deerleap Stones and they mark at least one ley line running towards Warminster. Near these stones there is supposedly a tunnel entrance and a dog was said to have been thrust in, to reappear some days later from an exit at Glastonbury Tor. This is a distance of about eight miles as the crow flies. |
The story of the tunnel passing under the river Brue is similar to that of the tunnel which is alleged to connect King’s College Chapel to Granchester Manor, Cambridge, passing under the river Cam. Alfred Watkins, in his book The Old Straight Track, refers to such legends and states that they might be connected with leys. Michael Behrend in The Landscape Geometry of Southern Britain (Zodiac House/Fenris Wolf) has shown that the Kings to Granchester Manor tunnel is definitely a ley.
A passage does exist from the Street Manor House grounds but it cannot be explored fully because of an obstruction some distance from its mouth. It is thought to begin in the house and lead straight to the stables. Bligh Bond excavated the reputed site of this tunnel near the Galilee and found the subsoil to be marshy and so probably unsuitable for a tunnel ever to have existed there. A large relieving arch was revealed but this was thought to have been put up to carry the walls of the Galilee over a particularly bad piece of ground. Other explanations are of course still possible.
An old inmate of the women’s almshouse remembered seeing in her childhood a passage running from the well chamber on the south side of the Galilee Chapel. This tunnel had to be sealed up by the owner of the Abbey as a lamb fell down the hole in the ground and was never recovered. Bligh Bond decided to cut a trench around the outside of this chamber, starting from the south wall of the chapel and curving round to the east at a radius of twenty to thirty feet. This trench, which was eight to ten feet deep, passed through the monks’ graveyard to a point nearly due south of the well chamber, roughly opposite to a bit of free-stone wall bounding the space by the well. The rubble at this point gave way to reveal a filling of clay occupying a trench with vertical sides – which suggests that a tunnel did once exist here. This passage may have run southwards across the graveyard towards the guest hall and Almonry, and would have been connected with the service of the crypt. This would have made a covered way from the monastic buildings to the crypt of the Lady Chapel, thus enabling the monks to gain access to the shrines undetected by the pilgrims and sheltered from the weather or any unwelcome eyes.
The third story is of a large underground passage in the field to the south of the Abbey. There was once a land subsidence in one place and the stone head of a channel had been noticed. An old workman named Thyer remembered having seen a deep-walled passage with flag-stones opened by Mr Austin, owner of the chapel, but when Bligh Bond tried to locate the passage, Thyer was unable to remember the exact position of it.
However, yet another passage was said to have existed to the south of the Abbot’s Kitchen. This was a stone-built channel which crossed the orchard to a point in the Abbey’s western boundary. As a search was being made for the footings of the Abbot’s House, a trench was dug running to the south-east of the refectory. The subsequent passage, which was revealed a little beyond the southernmost boundary of the Abbot’s House, was found to be the main drain of the Abbey. One of Bligh Bond’s more enter- prising students entered this passage and climbed along it for some sixty feet before encountering any prohibitive obstruction. The tunnel ran in a south-westerly direction to the lowest point of Magdalene Street where there was once a chain bridge and probably a water gate to the Abbey for the entrance of barges. The Abbey in medieval times relied upon the local canals for its connection with the outside world, and these canals were very active with the Abbot’s barges; a highly secular application of religious privilege that was not uncommon at this time.
The fourth and last legend is of a tunnel from the Abbey to the Tor, or to the church of St Michael formerly upon the Tor, and interconnecting with a series of by-tunnels beneath the Tor. Another large entrance is believed to exist near the waterworks reservoir in Wellhouse Lane [which runs west of the Tor]. This story is very widely rumoured. Moreover, numerous dowsers have commented upon the supposed ’hollowness’ of the Tor and its great variety of underground springs forming a complex network of hidden waterways. But the story has yet to be physically verified.
Two new tunnels have recently been uncovered at Glastonbury, both running out from the Abbey Barn, a medieval tithebarn situated between the Abbey and the Tor. A correspondent was present when the tunnels were accidentally discovered. First, a heavy vehicle crashed through the road at the corner of the main entrance to the Barn. A large tunnel appeared, running towards the refectory area of the Abbey, but it was quickly filled in with rubble by contractors who were then engaged in repairing the Barn’s fabric. The tunnel most definitely followed a straight course, but because of the zeal of the contractors the passage has now been reconsigned to oblivion. The second underground trackway was also found by the builders and similarly dealt with. According to the charge-hand on the construction team, this tunnel was behind the Barn and was angled directly at the Tor. It too was of considerable size. The existence of these tunnels, midway between and leading towards the two most sacred sites of the area, is good evidence of a vast subterranean complex beneath Glastonbury, as befits a place of such ecumenical and mythological complexity.
It is obvious from the above that secret tunnels did and possibly do exist in the Glastonbury area. Their exact purpose is obscure, but like their countrywide counterparts, they seem to be reflections of a mystery and sanctity attaching to places of paramount geomantic importance in the topographic interrelation of religious sites.
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Recommended Books
Bond, F. Bligh. The Hill of Vision.
Bond, F. Bligh. The Mystery of Glaston & her Immortal Traditions.
Pennick, Ann. Dene-Holes and Subterranea. Megalithic Visions (pamphlet).
Note by the webmaster
In early 1997, an old gentleman resident in Street, Leon, who had been a gas engineer all his working life, told me of the tunnel system beneath Glastonbury. He volunteered this without knowing I would be interested. He verified that he himself had seen the tunnels from the Abbey to the George & Pilgrims Inn, from the Abbey westwards to just past St Benedict’s Church (under Benedict Street), at Street Manor and leading toward Wearyall Hill under the Brue, and near the Abbey Barn, going between the Abbey and the Tor. He was quite matter-of-fact about this, and lamented that such interesting facets of knowledge of Glastonbury seemed, for some reason, to be suppressed. He mentioned that he had been instructed not to talk about them, at risk of losing his job. – Palden Jenkins.