Glastonbury, England 4K | Alternative Culture and Arthurian Legend - Town Walking Tour
Welcome to this tour of Glastonbury town in southwest England The town is situated in Somerset, 23 miles (37 km) south of Bristol It has a population of approximately 9,000 Glastonbury is known for its ancient and medieval sites and for it's New Age community It is notable for myths and legends related to Glastonbury Tor, concerning Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur Joseph is said to have arrived in Glastonbury and stuck his staff into the ground when it flowered miraculously into the Glastonbury Thorn Glastonbury Festival, held in the nearby village of Pilton, takes its name from the town The name Glastonbury is a corruption of the Saxon Glæstyngabyrig When the settlement is first recorded in the 7th and the early 8th century, it was called Glestingaburg In 1693 Glastenbury, Connecticut was founded and named after the English town from which settlers had emigrated The opening of the Glastonbury Canal encouraged local building and in the 1730s it became a prosperous borough By the mid 19th century Glastonbury Canal problems and competition from the railways caused a decline In 1854 the railway came to the town but the main railway line to Glastonbury closed in 1966 Today tourism is a large part of the town's economy It's historical importance and many independent shops being a magnet in the area The impact of the Glastonbury Festival also has an estimated economic benefit of around £35m Historically the town survived on industrial production of sheepskins, woollen slippers, boots and shoes Clarks shoes still has its headquarters in Street, but shoes are no longer manufactured there Glastonbury's tourism significance developed in the 19th and 20th centuries based on the rise of antiquarianism, the association with the abbey and mysticism of the town This has led to a steady rise in the town's population since 1801 Glastonbury received national media coverage in 1999 when cannabis plants were found in the town's floral displays A thousand years of beliefs and legends are part of the history of this unique place Many long-standing legends were examined in a four-year study by archaeologists at the University of Reading who amongst other findings, speculated that the connection with King Arthur and his Queen, Guinevere was created deliberately by the monks in 1184 to meet a financial crisis caused by a devastating fire Other myths examined include a visit by Jesus and the flowering of the walking stick The study made new archaeological finds and found Glastonbury to be a remarkable archaeological site In 1191, monks at the abbey claimed to have found the graves of Arthur and Guinevere to the south of the Lady Chapel of the Abbey Church The remains were said to have been moved and were lost during the Reformation Joseph is said to have arrived in Glastonbury by boat over the flooded Somerset Levels On disembarking he stuck his staff into the ground and it flowered miraculously into the Glastonbury Thorn This is said to explain a hybrid hawthorn tree that only grows within a few miles of Glastonbury Each year a sprig of thorn is cut, by the local Anglican vicar and the eldest child from St John's School and sent to the Queen Glastonbury Abbey presents itself as the oldest above-ground Christian church in the world which according to the legend was built to house the Holy Grail, 65 or so years after the death of Jesus The legend also says that as a child, Jesus had visited Glastonbury along with Joseph The legend probably was encouraged during the medieval period when religious relics and pilgrimages were profitable business for abbeys William Blake mentioned the legend in a poem that became a popular hymn "Jerusalem" In 1934 artist Katherine Maltwood suggested a landscape zodiac, a map of the stars on a gigantic scale formed by features in the landscape such as roads and streams, could be found around Glastonbury She held that the "temple" was created by Sumerians about 2700 BC studies concluded that the evidence contradicted the idea of an ancient zodiac The eye of Capricorn was identified as a haystack The western wing of the Aquarius phoenix was a road laid in 1782 to run around Glastonbury The Cancer boat or crab consists of a network of 18th-century drainage ditches and paths There are some Neolithic paths preserved in the peat of the bog formerly comprising most of the area but none of the known paths match the lines of the zodiac features Glastonbury is also said to be the centre of several ley lines Glastonbury is twinned with the Greek island of Patmos The town has a temperate climate which is generally wetter and milder than the rest of the country The annual mean temperature is approximately 10 °C (50.0 °F) The summer months of July and August are the warmest and are approximately 21 °C (69.8 °F) Annual sunshine rates are slightly less than the regional average of 1,600 hours Average rainfall is around 700 mm (28 in) The Church of St John the Baptist dates from the 15th century It is described as "one of the most ambitious parish churches in Somerset" and has been designated as a Grade I listed building There are approximately 170 listed buildings or structures in the town's designated conservation area of which eight are listed grade I six are listed grade II and the remainder are listed grade II The nearest railway station is at Castle Cary but there is no direct bus route linking it to Glastonbury There are bus connections between Glastonbury and the railway stations at Bristol Temple Meads It's also served by daily 'Superfast' Coaches to and from London The main road in the town is the A39 which passes through Glastonbury from Wells connecting the town with Street and the M5 motorway Although the centre is not as thriving as it once was You can see it supports a large number of alternative shops Glastonbury had around seventy different faith groups The Glastonbury Order of Druids was formed on Mayday 1988 Sufism has been long established in Glastonbury The pagan Glastonbury Goddess Temple was founded in 2002 The 22nd Jagannatha Ratha-yatra Krishna Festival took place in Glastonbury in 2015 Glastonbury also headquarters the British Orthodox Church Glastonbury has a particular significance for members of the Baháʼí Faith Wellesley Tudor Pole, founder of the Chalice Well Trust, was one of the earliest adherents of this faith in the UK The local football team is Glastonbury F.C They joined the Western Football League in 1919 and have won the Western Football League title three times The first Glastonbury Festivals were a series of cultural events held in summer, from 1914 to 1926 It's now the largest open-air music and performing arts festival in the world
2022-02-11 18:36
