My fifth Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery, Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, is set in Glastonbury, Somerset, in the year 1397. The major landmark in this part of England is the Glastonbury Tor, a Celtic word for a high rock or hill. Glastonbury Tor rises 512 feet and dominates the levels of Somerset. The picture, shown here, was taken from Wearyall Hill. Between the hill and the Tor, you can see a corner of the modern town of Glastonbury. In medieval times, the town and surrounding hills formed a peninsula which rose up from the ocean at high tide. Now, much of the land in the Brue Valley has been reclaimed from the sea, so Glastonbury is some distance from the Bristol Channel which separates England from Wales.
There is much mystery surrounding Glastonbury Tor, which plays a role in my story, especially Celtic mythology concerning the Tor. I have created two fictional Druids who come to England from Ireland in this book who climb the Tor on a mission. Druids were the elites of ancient Celtic society and part of my druids’ mission involved an interesting phenomenon of the Tor called Tor Burrs or eggstones, hard, rounded, oval or egg-shaped boulders ranging from a fraction of an inch to a few feet in diameter.
Another feature of the ancient Tor is a series of terraces carved into its sides before one reaches the summit. Archaeologists are not sure how the terraces originated, if they are natural or man-made. They could have been formed by irregular erosion. They could have been man made for agricultural use at some point. Some scholars think they were made to form a maze or labyrinthine pattern. Lady Apollonia and some of her affinity had this theory in mind as one of their reasons for walking up the Tor.
The medieval Monastery of Saint Michael on the top of the Tor is involved in my story. Only the church tower survives in modern times from Saint Michael’s Monastery which was a daughter house to Glastonbury Abbey. You can see that tower atop the hill in the picture below. The remainder of the buildings did not survive the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16th century.
For more information on the Glastonbury Tor, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Tor
Tags: Chaucer's England, historical fiction, medieval mysteries