Glastonbury Abbey

Yesterday we also went to Glastonbury!  The Abbey there is in ruins, however, because it was ransacked during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539.  The abbot at Glastonbury was one of the few to put up a fight and was hung, drawn, and quartered on top of Glastonbury Tor, a place I'll post about later.

The site is very pretty and is surrounded by rich Somerset mythology.  The myth that makes it most famous in England is that it is the supposed burial place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.  However, this may be, as the British would say, a "dubious" possibility, as the finding of the King and Queen's bones coincided with a decline in the Abbey's popularity among pilgrims.  They were found in 1191 at one site and re-interned in a black marble tomb inside the Abbey in 1278 with King Edward I watching.

 This is where Arthur and Guinevere are said to have originally been found.

This is the site of the former black stone tomb in which the were reburied.  The sign reads:  "Site of King Arthur's Tomb.  In the year 1191 the bodies of King Arthur and his Queen were said to have been found on the South Side of the Lady Chapel.  On 19th April 1278 their remains were removed in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor to a black marble tomb on this site.  This tomb survived until the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539."

Now I have some sweet pictures of ruins!

A wall.

The wall in the picture before this runs to the right of this picture.  The Abbey was huge!

The corner of a ruined abbey is a lovely place for a bench.

View of the Abbey from the Edgar Chapel, which is behind the high altar.  The Abbey goes beyond the two tall things at the end.  Quite expansive.

Shameless selfy.  Me with some ruins.

I think this is very pretty.

Look at the flowers growing on the ruins!

That's all for now.  We have an incredibly early start tomorrow.  We're going to Cornwall and to the Atlantic Coast for the weekend!  It should be fun, but even if I went to bed now and got up 10 minutes before they were picking us up, I'd only be getting about 7 hours of sleep, and I still need to pack!  Thanks for reading!  More soon!