The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

Glastonbury in 1397 is the setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  The medieval history of the town of Glastonbury was intimately tied to Glastonbury Abbey, and the town had built up around the abbey grounds.  With one exception, all the abbey buildings within the abbey grounds are gone or in ruins.  I have discussed them in my previous posting.

There are abbey buildings, however, which survive in the town and elsewhere.  Some are just outside the perimeter of the abbey grounds and they play a role in my story.  Beyond the southeast corner of the grounds is the abbey tithe barn, still in excellent condition and housing the Somerset Rural Life Museum.  It is cruciform in shape like a church with symbols of the four evangelists carved on the four gable ends.  The picture above shows the eagle of Saint John the Evangelist on the west side of the building.  This tithe barn also plays a role in my story.

The George Hotel and Pilgrim’s Inn on the High Street in Glastonbury was the abbey inn for pilgrims by the 15^th century, but the abbey’s interest in encouraging pilgrimage goes back to earlier centuries.  I have described in my story that the pardoner, Bryan Landow was able to obtain accommodation the abbey’s Pilgrim Inn.

The local churches in Glastonbury were controlled by the abbey.  Two of them remain today.  Saint John the Baptist is on the High Street and plays a major role in my story.  My husband and I worshipped there on a couple of Sunday mornings when we were doing research for my book.  Saint Benedict, the other existing medieval church, stands to the west of the abbey grounds and is perfectly in line with the location of the abbey church.

Three other abbey buildings still exist in the village of Meare, just a few miles outside Glastonbury in the Somerset Levels.  The most important to my story is the Abbot’s Fish House, the only surviving monastic fishery in England.  It is a rectangular stone building which was constructed for the storage and processing of fish with a residence on the upper floor for the chief fisherman.

The Church of Saint Mary and the abbot’s summer residence are two other buildings associated with Glastonbury Abbey which still exist in Meare.  The abbot’s residence is now a grand farmhouse, but the church is now affiliated with the churches of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Benedictine Glastonbury, which I mentioned earlier, into one parish of the Church of England.

For more on the abbey tithe ban, click on
http://www.greatbarns.org.uk/glastonbury_abbey_barn.html or on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Rural_Life_Museum .

Glastonbury in 1397 is the setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  The medieval history of the town of Glastonbury was intimately tied to Glastonbury Abbey, and the town had literally built up around the abbey grounds.  Today that can still be seen, but those grounds, with one exception, only contain ruins as shown in the diagram on the left in which the viewer is looking eastward.

The northwest corner of the grounds is dominated by the ruins of the great abbey church which was almost 600 feet in length.  Only Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, destroyed by fire in the 17^th century, compared in length.  Some stonework is left in Glastonbury: the walls of the Norman Lady Chapel on the west end of the church and scattered bits of walls from the nave, the crossing, and the quire.  A marker in the quire shows where the remains of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere lie, recovered by monks in the 12^th century, they were reburied in the quire in the 13^th century.  Much of church area is now covered in grass.

A visitor can view a model of the church and other monastic buildings in the museum located at the extreme northwest of the grounds.  Also, some remnants from the abbey, such as 13^th century wooden doors, are on display there.

The chapter house was south of the south transept, but nothing of it remains.  Similarly, the cloister was just south of the nave.  Further south was the refectory where the vault beneath it survives.  Beyond that was the monk’s kitchen, but nothing of it remains.  South of the chapter house was the dormitory.  It was on the first floor, but only a suggestion of the ground floor remains.  Past it was the monks’ toilet block but now there is just a suggestion that something once stood there.

The abbot’s house was detached from all these monastic buildings and stood to the west of them.  Today all that survives from the abbot’s accommodations are the abbot’s kitchen and a little fragment of wall from his hall.  The only other medieval structure, within the abbey grounds still standing is the entry gate to Magdalene Street at the far northwest corner.  On the south side of the grounds, one can visit two beautiful ponds and the site of the abbey herb garden.

For more on Glastonbury Abbey, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Abbey .

Glastonbury in 1397 is the setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  I tried to show in my previous post that the medieval history of the town of Glastonbury was intimately tied to Glastonbury Abbey.  Here I will speak of the history of the abbey itself.

The most ancient church on the site of Glastonbury Abbey was the vetusta ecclesia in Latin, or the old church in English.  It survived until the abbey fire of 1184, but its origins are unknown.  Some believe it was the nucleus of a British monastery which preceded the Anglo-Saxon institution of the late 7^th to 8^th centuries.  Some believe the history of this church began with the legends of Joseph of Arimathea who brought Christianity to Glastonbury in the first century.  I will discuss those legends in a future post.

The medieval abbey became the richest and most venerated monastic foundation in England, first under the patronage of the Saxon King Ine who is said to have built a stone church to the east of the old church around 720 AD.  The abbey was further strengthened by a mid-10^th century abbot, Dunstan, who brought the Benedictine Rule to the abbey.  He later became Archbishop of Canterbury and was canonised in the 11^th century.  After the Norman Conquest, Glastonbury Abbey added extensive building to the church including the Lady Chapel in the west and considerable building additions to the east.  At the time of the Doomsday Book in 1086 Glastonbury was the wealthiest monastery in England.

Much of this monastery was destroyed in a great fire of 1184.  To help revive the fortunes of the abbey, the monks utilised the legend of King Arthur which I will discuss in a later post.  They discovered bones in the abbey cemetery which they identified as King Arthur and his Queen, Guinevere.  Later, in 1278, these remains were reburied inside the abbey church in a ceremony attended by King Edward I.  By then, the new building had been completed in the Gothic style, and the monks were promoting pilgrimage to support the abbey.

The 14^th century saw the construction of fine separate living quarters for the abbot.  Another development, particularly by 1397 when my story is set, was the monks encouragement of the legends of Joseph of Arimathea.  A well in the crypt of the Lady Chapel was named in the 14^{th century} as Saint Joseph’s Well and plays a part in my story.  The access to this well is shown in the picture at the top.  It is possible that this ancient well influenced the location of the vetusta ecclesia or ancient old church built in the previous millennium.

For more on the history of Glastonbury Abbey, click on
http://www.glastonburyabbey.com/history_archaeology.php?sid=cb9c97f5fa43841fbb7de44e66bbcec4 or on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Abbey .

Glastonbury in 1397 is the setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  There are many legends about Glastonbury starting from the Roman period but few written records before the Norman Conquest in 1066.  What records do exist primarily concern Glastonbury Abbey, and many of those were lost in a fire of 1184 or at the time of the Dissolution by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.

There is written and archaeology evidence concerning Glastonbury Abbey from the seventh century and archaeological evidence concerning Glastonbury Tor, all of which I will discuss in future postings.  After the Conquest, there is much written material about both the abbey and the town.

The abbey served as a focal point around which the medieval town grew and towards which the various roads coming into Glastonbury converged.  By the 12^th century, the abbey grounds formed almost a square around which the town was developing.  The High street ran along the north side.  On the west was Magdalene Street joining the High Street at the Market Place.  Lambcook Street was on the east side.  The medieval town grew up on these three sides and extended out in the direction of Wells on the northeast, towards the Chalice Well on the southeast, the village Meare to the northwest, and towards Beckery to the west.

Two parish churches existed at the time of my novel, and both were run by the abbey.  Saint John the Baptist on the High Street was the main parish church as it still is today.  Saint Benignus, due west of the abbey, served as a chapel under Saint John’s church.  In the 17^th century, it was renamed Saint Benedict.  The picture above looks down Saint Benedict Street towards the church from the area of the Marker Place.  Today these two churches are joined with Saint Mary’s in the nearby village of Meare to form one modern parish.

From Saxon times, the town catered to the needs of the abbey and was dependent on its fortunes.  In addition to Saint John’s church, there are a couple of buildings today on the High Street that are medieval.  One was a Pilgrim’s Inn to serve pilgrims coming to the abbey.  In the 19^th century it became the George Hotel and is now called the George Hotel and Pilgrim’s Inn.  Another is the Tribunal which now houses the Glastonbury Lake Village Museum mentioned in my last post.  Each of these was originally built just after my story, but they give an idea of the architecture of the time.  There are remnants of medieval almshouses just inside the west entrance to the abbey grounds from Magdalene Street and across that street as a part of Saint Margaret’s Hospital.  The abbey tithe barn is just outside the southeast corner of the abbey grounds and now houses the Somerset Rural Life Museum.

Glastonbury in 1397 is the setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  There has been human habitation in the general area of Glastonbury for at least 75,000 years but not in the town itself.  Wooden trackways were built in the Somerset Levels just to the west of Glastonbury from as early as 4000 BC.  The tracks connected areas of higher ground, especially in times of high water due to flooding.

There were also marsh area Celtic settlements called lake villages which were built in the watery environment of the Somerset Levels on great platforms of felled timbers.  One was just at the edge of present-day Glastonbury and another a couple of miles west near the village of Meare.  The picture on the upper left is a 1911 reconstruction drawing by A. Forestier of the Glastonbury Lake Village showing log boats arriving laden with swans.  This village reached its peak of about 200 people in the 2^nd century BCE.  Artefacts from the site are on display at the museum located in the Tribunal, a building on the High Street in Glastonbury.

There was trade for British tin from ancient Greece and Rome.  Much of that was Cornish tin, but some of the tin came from the Mendip Hills in Somerset which form the north boundary of the Levels that I discussed I my last post.  The trade in this tin could have been accessed by water just as it was with Cornish tin.

There are many interesting legends about Glastonbury, and I will discuss some of them in future postings including legends that concern Joseph of Arimathea, a New Testament character, coming to Glastonbury.  Since he is part of the title of my novel, I would note here that if he came to Britain as the legends suggest, it would have been when the Celts were settled throughout Britain and before the Roman occupation.  Furthermore, it would have been at a time when Glastonbury was accessible from the sea.

After 43 CE, the Romans treated the area of the Somerset Levels around Glastonbury as a rural area.  However, the Fosse Way, the Roman road which connected Lincoln to Exeter passed just to the east of Glastonbury.  There were Roman settlements in Bath and perhaps the towns of Wells to the northeast of Glastonbury and in Ilchester to the southwest.  There is a cemetery just east of Glastonbury near Shepton Mallet that may contain Roman Christians.

For more on the Glastonbury Lake Village, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Lake_Village .

For more on the Romans in Somerset, click on
http://www1.somerset.gov.uk/archives/ASH/Romano-brit.htm .

Glastonbury in 1397 is the setting for Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth novel in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  Its setting is different from other books in the series in several ways.  First, its location in the middle of the Somerset Levels is an unusual geographic location within the West Country of England.

The Somerset Levels is a coastal plain and wetland in the middle of Somerset.  Glastonbury is a major town centrally located in the region.  From southwest to northeast the Levels are drained largely by the rivers, Parrett, Brue, and Axe.  It is the Brue which flows between Glastonbury and its southern neighbour, the town of Street.

The Bristol Channel has some of the highest tides in the world, and the Levels are nearly at sea-level.  This means that these wetlands have always been subject to flooding from sea water.  Glastonbury is located at the eastern end of a raised peninsula of land which rises hundreds of feet above sea level.  Thus, the hill east of Glastonbury could be seen to rise like an island when people approached the town by boat when the area was flooded.  The peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Levels, came to known as the Isle of Avalon which I will discuss in a future posting on the connection of King Arthur with Glastonbury.

Since Roman times, men have reclaimed land by drainage from this wetland as was done in the fens of East Anglia and in Holland.  In another future posting, I will discuss the legends about Joseph of Arimathea coming to Glastonbury because these legends say that Joseph lived in this part of England in the early first century before the Romans occupied England and this wetland area.  The Bristol Channel at that time probably extended all the way east to Glastonbury.  Such access from the sea became rarer as land was drained, especially in medieval times.  It was frequently the monasteries such as Glastonbury Abbey that led in this reclamation effort.

Glastonbury is now more than a dozen miles from the sea, so it is hard for us to imagine access to the town from the sea in the west.  Yet, there have been events since medieval times when flooding from the sea again made such access possible.  One was in 1607, well after my 14th century story.  More recently, in 2013 and 2014, the area was subject to flooding from the sea and from massive rainfalls which caused freshwater flooding.  My husband and I experienced some remnants of that flooding on our research trip to Glastonbury in March of 2014.  We had to drive an alternate route from north Devon to get to Glastonbury because the direct highway was still closed from the previous winter’s flooding.  The picture shown above was taken from the heights of Glastonbury Tor in the direction of the River Brue and shows extensive casual water still in the fields, remaining from serious flooding of the Levels in the winter of 2014.

For more on the Somerset Levels, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Levels .

For over a month, I have been posting articles on this blog related to Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth novel written in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  This story is set in Cirencester, England, in 1395.  If you have enjoyed reading the posts about medieval Cirencester and have not yet read my story, this might be a good time to order it.

The paperback can be ordered online
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Happy reading!

The Cirencester Parish Church of Saint John Baptist is located just south of the abbey grounds and faces the Marketplace to the west.  This is one of the medieval buildings in Cirencester that existed in 1395 when I set Templar’s Prophecy,the fourth novel in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  My heroine lived on Dyer Street and would have passed the church every time she would have walked to the Marketplace or Cirencester Abbey.  She and others in the story had occasion to visit the church itself.

The origins of this church were tied to the foundation of the abbey in the 12^th century.  The new abbey was built on the side of a minster church founded in the eighth or ninth century.  It was to replace that church that Saint John Baptist was built as the new parish church.  Enlarged over the centuries, it is now one of the largest parish churches in England as pictured to the top left.

In March of 2013, my husband and I were in Cirencester and visited the church several times including two Sunday mornings when we worshipped there.  It is an impressive church, grandly built because of the money generated by the wool trade in the town.  The aisles on either side of the nave are wide.  The internal length of the church is 158 feet and the width 104 feet.

Today there are several features which have been added after 1395, so one must mentally ignore these to get a feeling for the church at the time of my book.  The impressive tower at the west end of the church was built five years after my story.  The large Trinity Chapel was added to the north wall of the nave in the 15^th century as was the multi-storey porch built outside the South door.  The roof of the nave was raised by a height of 20 feet in 1520 at the expense of the town’s merchants.  As one sits in the nave and looks towards the chancel rather than upwards, one sees the church much as it was at the time of my story.

For more on the Church of St John Baptist, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St._John_the_Baptist,_Cirencester .

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  The abbey played a major role in Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century and most of it has disappeared as I described in my previous posting.

Still, there are traces of the abbey in and around Cirencester.  The abbey grounds were bordered on two sides by the old Roman wall of which some parts are gone but others are visible.  The Norman arch at the far corner of the grounds from the site of the church was erected as a gatehouse in the 12^th century.  Ruins of the Roman wall are visible running next to the River Churn.  Also, the wall that separated the abbey church from the nearby parish church and its churchyard is still standing.  The picture at the top shows a portion of the abbey wall as viewed from the churchyard of the parish church.

A sign along Dollar Street in Cirencester marks the medieval gatehouse or Dole Hall where alms were distributed by the monastery.  The street name, Dollar Street, a corruption of dole, is derived from this activity.  Just outside the abbey grounds are a few arches from the 12^th century Saint John’s Hospital which the abbey acquired in the 13^th century.  Also, on the edge of town are a dovecote and the barn of Barton Grange which the abbey owned and used.

The Corinium Museum has surviving artefacts from the abbey and displays which give the visitor a view of abbey life in the fourteenth century.  Artefacts from the abbey include carvings of monks and popes, medieval tiles, and pieces of stone fan vaulting.

The abbey also had responsibility for Saint John Baptist, the parish church of which the abbot was the rector.  I will talk more about that church in my next posting.  Shortly after the time of my story, the abbey built the south porch of the church and used the second storey of the porch as a town hall because they controlled the market.  Their newly built town hall overlooked the Marketplace.

For more information on Cirencester Abbey, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester_Abbey or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp79-84

The Augustinian Abbey of Saint Mary in Cirencester plays a major role in Templar’s Prophecy, the fourth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  Indeed, the abbey played a major role in Cirencester for over 400 years until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.  The monastery, as it appears in my story set in 1395, was built in the 12^th century, included the church and cloister, dormitory, refectory, kitchen, infirmary, cellarium, and library.

None of these buildings exists today.  The monastic grounds are a great open expanse of grass forming a town park.  There are flat stones which outline where the abbey church was located as shown in the picture above.  A block of flats, also shown in the picture above, now sits to the northwest of where the church was located, but most of the area where monastic buildings once stood is now parkland.

Today a bandstand and small children’s playground are in the parkland which also features a couple of small brooks and the abbey fishpond.  The flowing brooks are a reminder that the abbey once controlled the milling in town. 

Tension between the abbey and the town was so severe that the townspeople welcomed the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539.  Demolition of the abbey church began immediately, and townspeople eagerly used the stone monastic buildings as a quarry.  Some of the stones that were reused can be seen in present-day buildings of the town.

For more information on Cirencester Abbey, click on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirencester_Abbey or on
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol2/pp79-84