England's oldest and most legendary monastery — the supposed burial place of King Arthur and the heart of Christian Britain for over a thousand years.
Glastonbury Abbey occupies one of the most mythologised sites in British history: a low hill rising from the Somerset Levels, associated since the early medieval period with Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. Whether or not these legends have any historical substance, the abbey itself was real and immensely powerful. By the Norman Conquest it was the wealthiest monastery in England, its origins stretching back to a possible sixth or seventh-century foundation, and its estates extending across Somerset and beyond.
The great medieval church — one of the largest in England, over 180 metres long — was built after a catastrophic fire in 1184 that destroyed the old Saxon buildings. It was never fully completed before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, when Henry VIII suppressed Glastonbury and hanged its last abbot, Richard Whiting, on Glastonbury Tor. The ruins that remain today preserve magnificent Romanesque and Early English Gothic stonework. The site gained renewed legendary significance in 1191 when the monks claimed to have discovered the tomb of Arthur and Guinevere — a claim of disputed authenticity but incalculable influence on the Arthurian tradition.
The oldest and wealthiest monastery in medieval England, Glastonbury Abbey was the spiritual and cultural heart of the English church for centuries and the centre of the Arthurian mythological tradition.
Possible early Christian hermitage or community associated with the Tor and the marsh landscape. Traditions of Joseph of Arimathea and the first English church.
The abbey founded or greatly developed. A major centre of learning, manuscript production and royal patronage. Athelstan and Edmund buried here.
Norman and Plantagenet phases of rebuilding after the 1184 fire. The great church constructed. Supposed discovery of Arthur's tomb in 1191.
The abbey at its greatest wealth and physical extent. The Abbot's Kitchen (still standing) and other buildings constructed.
The claimed discovery in 1191 of a grave inscribed 'Here lies the famous King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon' — almost certainly a medieval fabrication but historically influential
Excavations in the 1900s by Frederick Bligh Bond (using controversial methods) revealing previously unknown chapels and layout details
The Abbot's Kitchen — a beautifully preserved 14th-century octagonal kitchen, one of the finest medieval domestic buildings in Britain
Evidence beneath the nave for a possible early medieval oratory predating the Saxon monastery
The Glastonbury Tor, nearby, with evidence of occupation from the Bronze Age through to a medieval hermitage
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