The Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries

Greetings!  Today, we continue to examine some topics which arise in King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  Our attention is focused on the ancient city of Worcester, the setting for the novel.  In my last post I spoke of the development of Worcester from pre-Roman times through the Saxon period.  This post will deal with the history of the city from the time of the Norman Conquest in AD 1066.

William the Conqueror used the five years after the Conquest to consolidate his power in England.  He appointed Urse d’Abetot to be Sheriff of Worcestershire in 1069.  Urse immediately began construction of Worcester Castle, just to the south of Worcester Cathedral, with the castle impinging on the cemetery of the monks who formed the cathedral chapter.  The picture shown above is of the medieval refectory of the monks that faces what is left of the monks’ cemetery and the castle.

The motte and bailey of this Norman castle overlooked the River Severn at a point where it could be forded at low tide.  Wood was used in the castle’s initial construction but was later upgraded to stone.  Early in the 13^th century, the use of Worcester Castle was reduced to just a goal (jail) which plays a role in King Richard’s Sword.

In my previous blog posting, I mentioned that Saint Wulfstan was the last of the Saxon Bishops to survive in the Norman era.  There was much friction between the sheriff and the bishop with the Bishop of Worcester usually coming out on top.

Worcester was a center of religious life with the presence of several monasteries including the Benedictine priory which housed Worcester Cathedral.  Saints Oswald and Wulfstan, mentioned in my last posting, each founded a hospital that served the city.  Wulfstan’s Hospital shown above was near Sidbury Gate.  This gate to the medieval city appears in the prologue to my book.

The hospital itself served also as almshouses and what we now would call a hospice.  The present building is up to 800 years old.  The exterior of its great hall is shown in the previous picture, while the interior of the hall appears in the picture to the left.

The early 13^th century brought a rebuilding of the walls to the growing city and there are many remnants of those walls.  A water-filled ditch was just outside the walls except along the River Severn.  The picture below shows what is left of the medieval wall along the east side of the city. Much of the medieval wall was levelled in AD 1651 following the battle of Worcester, leaving what you see today.

The medieval walls of the city had many gates.  The Water Gate, shown below, along with Frog Gate and Sidbury Gate, mentioned above, were all south of the Cathedral area.  Friars’ Gate and Saint Martin’s Gate were important ones on the east side, while Foregate gave access from the north.  There were several other openings to the wall along the River Severn, including access to the medieval bridge across the river.

Please join us next time when I will continue the history of Worcester.

Greetings!  Please, come with us as we examine some topics which arise in King Richard’s Sword, the sixth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  We begin by looking at the ancient city of Worcester, the setting for the novel.  Worcester is located on the east bank of the River Severn, upstream from Gloucester and Aust, other venues for novels set in Lady Apollonia’s West Country.  The Severn River was tidal at and beyond Worcester and could be forded at low tide.  This crossing was part of an ancient trade route to Wales dating back to Neolithic times and was fortified by the Britons as early as 400 BC.  By the late fourteenth century, at the time of my novel, there was a bridge at the fording spot, and a modern replacement of that bridge can be seen in the picture, shown above, looking upstream at the River Severn in Worcester.

The Romans, who occupied the area by the first century AD, used charcoal from the Forest of Dean to run pottery kilns and produce iron.  They also produced salt at this location.  Excavations in Worcester have never revealed the kind of municipal buildings which the Romans typically would have built in administrative centers.  However, the Romans did build some fortifications to protect their trade and production interests.  The map on the left shows where these fortifications were built in the southern portion of what became the Saxon settlement.

In the latter part of the first millennium, the Saxons called Worcester by the name Weogorna Ceaster where Weogorna meant people of the winding river with Ceaster being their name for a Roman settlement.  Over time, Weogorna Ceaster evolved into Worcester.  The walls and gates of the Saxon town are also shown on this map.  Some of these gates are mentioned in my story.

We know more about the Anglo-Saxon period than earlier times.  The Anglo-Saxons settled in the town in the 7^th century.  The Wegornan peoples were a sub-tribe of the Hwicce who occupied modern Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and parts of Wiltshire.  In AD 680, the Hwicce picked Weogorna Ceaster for a major fortification as well as the episcopal see of its new bishopric.

Christianity and monastic life already existed in Wegorna Ceaster, when the priory church became the cathedral church of the new diocese, a function it still served at the time in which King Richard’s Sword is set.  Several parish churches also existed in the 7^th century city, and there was extensive ecclesiastic ownership of lands.

Two Saxon bishops of Worcester achieved sainthood.  Oswald was appointed in AD 962 and later also was Archbishop of York, holding that position jointly with his Worcester bishopric.  It is he who brought Benedictine Rule to Worcester where the clerics had previously served other orders.  Wulfstan was appointed in AD 1062 and continued after the Norman Conquest until his death in 1095.  No other Saxon bishop survived after 1072.  The crypt of the present cathedral church was built by Wulfstan.

By the 11^th century, a bridge was built over the River Severn at Worcester because of the trade route leading to Wales.  That bridge was replaced early in the 14^th century before I set King Richard’s Sword in Worcester at the end of the century.  The Norman conquerors built a castle south of the priory, but nothing remains of it today except Edgar’s Tower which appears in my story.  The tower is an entrance to the priory grounds and is shown in the picture below.

Next month, I expect to discuss the history of Worcester from the time of the Norman Conquest.  Please join us again as we explore this ancient English city.

This posting will wrap-up my discussion of medieval topics in Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, as shown on the left.  Today I begin with the pardoner, a character who has appeared in all my novels.  Brandon Landow, the name of my character, was inspired by Chaucer’s Pardoner, a person licensed by the church to sell indulgences or pardons to sinners who feared for their souls after death.

Pardoners traveled about the medieval countryside selling pardons, paper documents with signatures of bishops which entitled the bearers to have forgiveness for their sins.  They also sold indulgences, grants by the Pope of remission of the temporal punishment in purgatory still due for sins after absolution.  Finally, they frequently sold supposedly holy relics which were often fakes.  My pardoner, Brandon Landow, was involved in all these practices throughout my books.

There was a medieval concept in the Roman Catholic Church of a Treasury of Merit controlled by the church.  This was the concept that Jesus Christ and the Christian Saints, through their extreme goodness, had built up a supply of merit before God which could never be exhausted.  From this unlimited supply of merit, the church could then grant pardons and indulgences for a price, and this concept was abused to allow the church to make money.  Pardoners were part of that abuse, and Chaucer created his character based on those abuses.

Brandon Landow exhibits many of the characteristics of Chaucer’s Pardoner, a drawing of whom from the Ellesmere Manuscript is shown on the right.  These characteristics include being untrustworthy and duplicitous in his supposedly holy dealings.  He was considered a cleric who was subject to the jurisdiction of canon law but, at the same time personally motivated by avarice.  He became very rich from his deceitful profession.  In addition, his appearance had characteristics associated with shiftiness and gender ambiguity.

Brandon, as a boy, had served in Lady Apollonia’s household, so my heroine knew the Pardoner’s deceitful, untrustworthy character which leads to her suspicion of him whenever he appears in my stories.  You will enjoy seeing how the tension between Brandon Landow and Lady Apollonia plays out if you read Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure.

Another medieval character of whom I want to comment is that of an anchorite.  These were medieval religious recluses who, in England, were often attached to a parish church.  An anchorite took a vow of stability of place for his or her lifetime.  There was an anchorite in Memento Mori based on a hermit who had a cell attached to the Chapel of Saint Kyneburgh.  I have again included an anchorite character, named Brother Johanus, in this story.  His cell was attached to the south transept of the parish church, St. John the Baptist, which is located on the High Street in the heart of Glastonbury.  The cell would have protruded from the transept of that church, a modern picture of which is shown below.

Brother Johanus lived in his small cell from which he could open a window when summoned and counsel anyone in the community who felt a need to consult him.  In my story, Johanus was known to be very devout and compassionate in Glastonbury and many people, including an important member of Lady Apollonia’s household, sought his advice

Please join us again next time when we will begin examining medieval topics which arise in my sixth novel, King Richard’s Sword.

Glastonbury Tor, important in Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, my fifth book in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series, is shown on the cover of the paperback version of my novel.  The Tor was of great interest to the Celtic people who inhabited Britain from before the Roman occupation of the island.  The learned priestly leaders of the Celts were called Druids, and I wanted to bring two characters into Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure who were Druids from Ireland.  In this posting, let me tell you something about Druids and how I stretched history just a bit to include them in my story.

Druids are first mentioned around the third century BCE, but not in their own words because they kept no written records until many of them were Christianized.  Julius Caesar wrote about them through his encounters with the Gaul’s, Celtic peoples in what is now France.  Caesar found that the Druids were an elite class of the Celts and religious leaders who oversaw public and private sacrifices.  They rendered judgments in both private and public quarrels.  He also stated that they abstained from warfare, paid no tribute, and were not bound by Celtic tribal boundaries.  Their training could take two decades as they specialized in ancient verse, natural philosophy, astronomy, and lore of the gods.  The Romans suppressed the Druids in Gaul in AD 14-31 during the reign of Emperor Tiberius.

In Britain, the Druids were very important because although there were many different tribes of Celtic peoples, the Druids served all of them.  Much of their training was done on the Isle of Anglesey off the northwest corner of Wales, and a scene from that island is shown above.  After the Roman occupation of Britain by Emperor Claudius, the Romans also tried to suppress and destroy the power of the British Druids but were not entirely successful.

Christianity came to Britain while the Romans still occupied the island.  Many of the Celts converted and the Celtic Druids lost their priestly functions.  They did, however, retain their traditional roles as poets, historians, and judges.  They continued to be an elite class which persisted in Wales and Ireland as bards and seers at least into the 13^th century.

It must be noted that women frequently played an important leadership role in Celtic society, and this carried over to the Druids.  The picture shown above is a statue, in the Westminster area of London, honoring the Celtic warrior Boudica who led armed resistance against the Romans.  This importance of women in Celtic and Druid society led me to create one of the two Druids in my story as a woman.

Because Druidic influence hung on longer in Wales and Ireland than in England, I decided to work into my story two Druids from Ireland, a man named Conomorus and his mother, Eponina.  (Their important influence in Ireland was plausible for the 13^th century but might be stretching things a bit for the 14^th century setting of my story.)

In my story, a ritual foretold by a Druid oracle to be performed atop Glastonbury Tor served as motivation for their trip from Ireland to England.  The two Druids appear in the prologue of my book, entering England at Aust.  There, they worshipped Sabrann, the Celtic god of the River Severn, before making their way to Cottage Grove Farm near Glastonbury Tor.  My story describes their adventures, and I will not be a spoiler except to say that Lady Apollonia does meet Conomorus, and they establish a relationship which continues in my seventh novel, Usurper’s Curse.

See you next time.

Glastonbury Tor dominates the skyline of Glastonbury, Somerset, the setting of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, my fifth book in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.  The Tor, a Celtic word having nothing to do with the medieval tower at the top, is shown on the cover of the paperback version of my novel.

I first became aware of this startling feature of the landscape while traveling through Somerset on my way from Devon to Wiltshire from which my paternal Aust grandparents had emigrated to America in the late 19^th century.  As the highway took us across the Somerset levels, we had a preview of Glastonbury Tor as the road approached a smaller version of the hill called the Burrow Mump.  Burrow and mump each mean hill and this hill had once served as a Norman motte and now has the ruins of a medieval church on top.  The hill is, indeed, a miniature of Glastonbury Tor which, in just a few miles, began to appear, looming more than 500 feet over its surroundings with a church tower on its top, a sight I will never forget.

The next year, I was able to visit Glastonbury itself and climb the Tor, as shown in the picture below.  My climb not only provided a wonderful view of the Somerset Levels below but also gave me some insight into the terraces which seem to texture the slopes of the Tor.  These terraces are something of a mystery.  Perhaps they made a labyrinth as some claim?  Some of the terraces were possibly used for growing crops.  One’s questions go on and on, but we do not know how or when such features of the Tor were made or what they represent.

One thing I did not see on that first visit to the Tor were any of the Tor Burrs or “eggstones” which are found on the slopes.  These egg-shaped boulders are much harder than the sandstone which underlies the Tor and can be any size from an inch to several feet in diameter.  Tor Burrs were of interest to some Druids in my story and I will speak of them in a future posting.

The terraces, on the other hand, were of interest to my heroine, the Lady Apollonia, while she lived in Somerset.  She was fascinated with the labyrinth theory of which she learned and her attempt to sketch the labyrinth appears in my book as shown on the right.

An important feature of Glastonbury Tor in medieval times was the Priory of Saint Michael at its very top.  The priory was a daughter house of Glastonbury Abbey and was dissolved along with the abbey by King Henry VIII in the 16^th century.  Only the tower of the priory church survives and sits atop the Tor, as shown in the background of the picture at the end of this posting.  In the foreground of the picture, I am walking on a nearby hill with two of my English cousins and you can see the Tor in the background.

Glastonbury Tor has been a place of mythology and spiritual interest to various peoples since truly ancient times.  In my posting of May 10, 2021, I mentioned a Lake Village just northwest of Glastonbury which existed centuries before the Roman period.  The inhabitants of that village were aware that Glastonbury Tor marked the southernmost sunrise of the year, important as the Winter Solstice.  The Celts had spiritual interest in the Tor which is why I brought Druids into my story.  Medieval mythology about King Arthur, mentioned in several of my recent posts, often named the Tor as the Isle of Avalon associated with the legends of Arthur.

Please join us next time when I will explain my choice of two Druid characters whom I include in Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure.

This posting will complete my discussion of the medieval Abbey of Saint Mary in Glastonbury, Somerset, setting of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, fifth book in the Lady Apollonia West Country Mystery Series.

The abbey church had to be rebuilt after a great fire of AD 1184.  This was funded at first by royalty and then by making the abbey a shrine for King Arthur and Queen Guinevere as discussed in my last posting.  Progress on the new church, though incomplete, was sufficient by Christmas day of 1213 for the monks to take possession.  Construction had started at the eastern end and progressed westward past the crossing and the transepts with at least a temporary roof.  Vaulting was still to be added.  Subsequently, by the middle of the thirteenth century, the new nave and western towers were in place.

Meanwhile, a few years had passed when Glastonbury replaced Wells as one of the seats of the bishop of the local diocese.  The diocese was known then as Bath and Glastonbury, not the more familiar title of Bath and Wells, until about AD 1219.

Further construction of the church continued into the 14^th century by adding the Galilee Porch connecting the west front to the Lady Chapel.  Vaulting was also finished in all parts of the building, and the interior was brilliantly painted and gilded, unlike the bare stone which we now see in surviving medieval churches.  A model of the abbey is shown above.  The completed church, including chapels on each end, was 600 feet long and built using Doulting limestone from the nearby Mendip Hills.  In the model, the cloister and dormitory of the abbey appear to the right of the church.

The abbey became a major economic force with its many manors and other possessions. Only Westminster Abbey could claim more wealth.  The monastic buildings of the abbey included a sumptuous home for the abbot which appears on the lower right of the picture of the model.  A century after Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the abbot hosted King Henry VII in the abbot’s quarters.

The Abbot’s Kitchen, shown on the right, is the only significant monastic building on the abbey grounds to have survived to the present day.  The kitchen for the rest of the monks could hardly have been more impressive than the Abbot’s Kitchen which includes four large fireplaces like the one shown in the picture that appears at the end of my post.

Besides all its property bringing income to the abbey, pilgrims’ regular visits also brought significant wealth.  Pilgrims wished to visit the tombs of saints such as St. Dunstan, an early abbot, as well as those of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere mentioned in an earlier posting.  It was also at the time of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure that the abbots encouraged various legends of Joseph to promote more pilgrimage.

The abbey continued to prosper throughout the 15^th century, well beyond Lady Apollonia’s time.  It was then that the Pilgrim’s Inn was constructed as mentioned in a recent blog posting, but all of this became meaningless when the Tudor King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries of his kingdom.  Glastonbury Abbey was the last to be dissolved, and its destruction was brutal.  The abbot was killed, and his body displayed atop Glastonbury Tor.  The buildings were destroyed and much of the stone on the abbey grounds was quarried, leaving the ruins we see today.  It was a tragic ending for one of the greatest English monasteries.

Please join us next time when my topic will be Glastonbury Tor.

This posting continues my discussion of the medieval history of Glastonbury, Somerset, the English setting of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, fifth book in my Lady of Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  I will begin to focus this time on the Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary, known as Glastonbury Abbey, around which, in my last posting, we noted the town was developing.

Although legends claimed that Joseph of Arimathea founded Glastonbury Abbey in the first century, AD, there is little evidence that the abbey’s history began before the Saxon period.  The Saxons conquered much of Somerset by the late seventh century, and the King of Wessex authorized the building of a stone church on the Glastonbury site in AD 712.  Remains of that church are to be found in the foundations of the west end of the medieval abbey church nave.

The church was enlarged in the eighth and tenth centuries.  St. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury from AD 940 to 956 was responsible for the latter enlargement.  The monastic buildings he erected to the south of the church were the earliest example of a cloistered layout in England.  The abbey had grown and prospered to the point that it was the wealthiest monastery in England by the time of the Norman conquest in AD 1066.

Water is an important resource to all monasteries, and this was especially true for Glastonbury Abbey in the early centuries of the Second Millennium.  Much work was done on water channels to facilitate access to the abbey’s supply of fish from the nearby village of Meare, as well as access to the Bristol Channel and the sea.  The Somerset Levels are flat areas of the shire to the west of Glastonbury which are just above sea level.  The abbey was responsible for reclaiming much of this land from the sea, similar to such efforts in the Netherlands and in the East Anglia region of England.

By the time of my story, the abbey had built a fish house shown above, at Meare, the only medieval fish house still existent in England.  It was the residence of the chief abbey fisherman and was used for salting or smoking fish caught in nearby Meare Pool, a body of water about five miles in circumference.  From this source, the abbey acquired pike, tench, roach, and eels for use on Fridays, fast days, and throughout Lent.  As many as 5,000 eels were consumed by the monks each year.

A great fire consumed much of the monastery in 1184.  Recovery from this traumatic event, which was partially funded by King Henry II and others, led to many changes in the abbey.  A Lady Chapel was built on the ruins of the Saxon Church.  The ruins of that building are shown just above.  When new, it was consecrated in 1186 in a ceremony attended by King Edward I.  The abbey cemetery was to the south of the Lady Chapel, just outside the larger portal shown in the picture above.

Two bodies were exhumed by the monks from this cemetery in 1191 and identified as King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.  After the rebuilding of the abbey church, the remains of Arthur and Guinevere were entombed prominently in its choir.  Many modern scholars presume the discovery and reburial of these remains was a medieval publicity stunt to entice pilgrims to come and fund the massive rebuilding of the monastery after the great fire.

All these events were well before 1397, the time of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure.  Join us next time when I will continue my history of Glastonbury Abbey.

The topic of this posting is the history, starting with the Norman Conquest, of Glastonbury, Somerset, site of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, fifth book in my Lady of Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  In my last posting, describing the history of the town in its first millennium, I included several legends along with actual history.  Glastonbury’s history as we move into the second millennium becomes more solid.

In the middle ages, the town was centered around an important monastery called Glastonbury Abbey, largely just a ruin today.  The map, shown above, illustrates how the medieval town grew up around the abbey grounds.  A marketplace developed near the northwest corner of the abbey grounds and to the south where Magdalene Street was quite wide.  The town provided support to the abbey, but it was an important medieval wool trade center as well.  I will speak more of the abbey in my next posting.  Almost all the remains of the buildings on the abbey grounds are ruins, thanks to the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16^th century by King Henry VIII.

Other medieval buildings still exist in the town which give us some insight into various aspects of medieval life.  They include two ancient parish churches, some almshouses, and several abbey buildings outside the actual abbey grounds.  On the north side of the High Street is the Tribunal, shown above, with me standing in the doorway.  The Tribunal gets its name from the possibility that it was used as a court, either by the abbey or as a secular court venue, but this is not well documented.  Similarly, it may have been used by one of the abbots as a hospice, or perhaps it was just a medieval merchant’s dwelling.  It now houses the local tourist information office and the Glastonbury Lake Village Museum.

The present-day George Hotel and Pilgrims’ Inn, shown on the left, is a few buildings to the west of the Tribunal.  It was the medieval abbey’s Pilgrims’ Inn and provided a place for many of the pilgrims who visited the abbey to stay during their visit.  The building survived the dissolution of the monasteries and became the George Hotel in the 19^th century.  These earlier names are preserved in the present title.  The abbey’s coat of arms, as well as that of King Edward IV, is above the door.

Another abbey building to survive in Glastonbury is its tithe barn shown below, located southeast of the abbey grounds.  Further afield, there are other buildings related to the abbey and medieval life, including the abbey fish house, the abbot’s summer residence, and the parish church, which was built by Glastonbury Abbey, several miles away in the village of Meare.  There can be no doubt that medieval life in Glastonbury was not only centered around the abbey, but the abbey was also intertwined with some of the surrounding area.

In Glastonbury itself, the abbey’s influence is felt in other medieval buildings which still exist.  The abbey was involved with the creation and operation of St. John’s Parish Church on the High Street and its daughter church, St. Benedict’s, to the west of the abbey.  Because of the strong involvement of the abbey in parish affairs, St. John’s was sometimes caught between the local abbot and the Bishop of Wells and Bath in whose diocese Glastonbury is situated.  There was a picture of St. John’s in my recent posting of April 26.

Finally, the medieval town often turned to the abbey for support.  There are remnants of two medieval almshouses along Magdalene Street which runs along the west side of the abbey grounds.  Just inside the main gate to the abbey are almshouses for women, shown on the right side of the picture on the right.  The Hospital of St. Mary Magdalene, also on Magdalene Street, was originally built by the abbey as almshouses for ten men, some of whom were pilgrims to the abbey.

In my next posting. I will focus on the history and some wonderful legends of the abbey.

My next postings feature topics from the history of Glastonbury, Somerset, the setting of Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  Unlike the other settings for my books, the Romans were not a major presence in Glastonbury, but the Fosse Way, a Roman road connecting Lincolnshire in the north to Devonshire in the southwest, passed just to the east of Glastonbury.  This area has involved human habitation since at least the Bronze Age.

There was a Lake Village of about a hundred persons before the Roman period a couple of miles northwest of the present town.  Their homes floated on water which at high tide connected with the Bristol Channel, now a dozen miles away.  This is shown on the map at the top.  In the last posting I wrote about legends of Joseph of Arimathea coming to Glastonbury from the Holy Land after the resurrection of Christ.  This map shows that according to these legends, he could have come by water in the first century A.D., before land was later reclaimed from the sea, as land has been reclaimed from water in East Anglia or in the Netherlands.

Glastonbury Tor is an ancient hilltop just to the east of the town, towering over it in the picture shown below, which is on the cover of my book.  The Tor would have dominated the scene to the east as one would have approached Glastonbury by water two thousand years ago.  Remains atop the Tor have been detected from the Saxon period.  Today one will see that the Tor has on its top just a tower, the remains of a medieval priory which plays an important role in my story.

Besides the legends of Joseph of Arimathea coming to Glastonbury, there are other interesting legends that do not involve Joseph.  The monks of Glastonbury Abbey claimed in the late 12^th century to have found the remains of the legendary King Arthur and Queen Guinevere in the abbey graveyard.  These remains were eventually reburied in a tomb in the quire of the abbey church near the crossing.  This reburial ceremony was important enough that King Edward I of England and Queen Eleanor attended it.

In the ruins of the abbey church, there is a sign commemorating Arthur’s tomb as shown in the picture below.  It is of interest that this legend arose shortly after a fire had done much damage to the abbey, perhaps the legends grew to stimulate pilgrimage and bring wealth to the abbey.  A related legend involving King Arthur and Queen Guinivere was that Glastonbury Tor, rising as it did out of the water at the time of King Arthur, was the Isle of Avalon.

There is evidence of habitation at Glastonbury as early as the 5^th century A.D. when Irish monks formed a monastery at Beckery on the southwest corner of modern Glastonbury.  Further settlement was in the center of Glastonbury by around AD 700 when it was named Glestingaburg.  Glastonbury Abbey had its origins by the 7^th century, although the legends of Joseph of Arimathea claim that he founded the first monastery.

The first stone church at the abbey site probably dates from the early eighth century and was enlarged in the 10^th century by Abbot Dunstan before he became Archbishop of Canterbury.  Other highlights from the Saxon period include the burials in the Abbey of King Edmund in 967 and King Edmund Ironside in 1016.

In the next posting I will continue discussing the history of Glastonbury after the conquest of England in 1066 by the Norman, William the Conqueror.

My next few postings will feature medieval topics from, Joseph of Arimathea’s Treasure, the fifth book in my Lady Apollonia West Country Mysteries.  The story is set in Glastonbury, Somerset.  Since the title features the New Testament character Joseph of Arimathea, I would like to use this posting to explore some of the legends about the real Joseph of Arimathea coming to Glastonbury.

Some of these legends are contained in the stained-glass windows of Saint John the Baptist, one the parish churches in Glastonbury.  Others represent Joseph of Arimathea as presented in the New Testament.  This parish church on the High Street of Glastonbury is shown on the left.  Pictures of two of its stained-glass windows are included in this posting.

Many of the legends of Joseph of Arimathea and the West Country of England cannot be traced back earlier that the 13^th century.  Some of these were promoted by the abbots in Glastonbury, particularly in the 14^th century when my story is set.  These include the story that Joseph brought the teenage Jesus to Glastonbury and other places in the West Country and that he later came back after the Crucifixion and planted his staff on Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury.  The staff then grew into the original Glastonbury Thorn, a variety still found in the Holy Land.  Several cuttings of this thorn are located around Glastonbury, and some of its bloom is sent every Christmas as a present to Queen Elizabeth II.  The window showing the event of Joseph planting his staff is above on the right.

The legends go on and on concerning Glastonbury.  Some say that Joseph brought to Glastonbury two vials containing the blood and sweat of Jesus, as depicted in the stained-glass window shown on the left.  A variation on this is that Joseph brought the Holy Grail to England and hid it in a well at Glastonbury, now called the Chalice Well.  The water of this well is red, suggesting the blood of Christ.  There are also stories of Joseph being buried in Glastonbury with the Holy Grail.

Other legends about Joseph of Arimathea have suggested that Joseph was the uncle of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus.  This might explain his interest in the teenage Jesus as well as the crucified Jesus.  Others have proposed that Joseph was a merchant whose interest in England may have originated with the desire to purchase tin from Cornwell.  We do know that the Greeks had a trade route established for Cornish tin by the 8^th century BC.  At the time of Joseph. there was a Jewish presence in the West Country of England, including in the mining of tin.

Some feel that Joseph was the first person to bring Christianity to Britain and establish the first church.  These legends often focus on Glastonbury, with the first church being on the site where the Lady Chapel of the medieval abbey church was located.  There is a well in the crypt of that chapel which was named for Joseph of Arimathea, and it plays a role in my story.  Other variations of the legends have Joseph founding a monastery with Saint Patrick being one of its early abbots.  A picture of the entry to this well is shown in the photo at the end of this posting.

None of these legends can be proved to be true.  Many that appeared in the Middle Ages were probably created because it helped someone’s agenda by increasing pilgrimage to a religious site such as Glastonbury Abbey.  Apart from these legends, all the Gospels in the New Testament of the Christian Bible tell us something about Joseph of Arimathea at the time of the death of Jesus.  From the Gospels we know he was a wealthy member of the Sanhedrin who originally came from Arimathea in Judea and participated in the burial of Jesus by offering his tomb.  From this biblical narrative, the legends described above grew and developed over many centuries.

In the next posting I will tell more about the history of Glastonbury.