Glastonbury Tor is a hill at Glastonbury, Somerset, England, which features the roofless St. Michael's Tower. The site is managed by the National Trust.
Tor is a local word of Celtic origin meaning 'conical hill'. The Tor has a striking location in the middle of a plain called the Summerland Meadows, part of the Somerset Levels. The plain is actually reclaimed fenland out of which the Tor rose like an island, but now, with the surrounding flats, is a peninsula washed on three sides by the River Brue. The remains of Glastonbury Lake Village were identified in 1892, showing that there was an Iron Age settlement about 300–200 BC on what was an easily defended island in the fens. Earthworks and Roman remains prove later occupation. The spot seems to have been called Ynys yr Afalon by the Britons, and it is believed to be the Avalon of Arthurian legend.
The slopes of the Tor appear to be quite regularly terraced. Some believe that this formation is the remains of an ancient, perhaps Neolithic, sacred labyrinth. Others attribute the terraces to natural ruts formed everywhere on grassy slopes by generations of grazing animals, which are slow to disappear if the grass cover is left undisturbed. The generally accepted explanation is terracing for farming, possibly by medieval monks. Even after the wetlands were drained by the Monks of Glastonbury Abbey via their vast network of drainage canals, the risk of flooding on the plain meant that farm land was at a premium for anything other than grazing cattle.
History
Some Neolithic flint tools recovered from the top of the Tor show that the site has been visited and perhaps occupied throughout human prehistory. Excavations on Glastonbury Tor, undertaken by a team led by Philip Rahtz between 1964 and 1966, revealed evidence of Dark Age occupation around the later medieval church of St. Michael: postholes, two hearths including a metalworker's forge, two burials oriented north-south (thus unlikely to be Christian), fragments of 6th century Mediterranean amphorae (for wine or oil), and a worn hollow bronze head which may have topped a Saxon staff.
The Celtic name of the Tor was "Ynys Witrin," or sometimes "Ynys Gutrin," meaning "Isle of Glass". At this time the plain was flooded, the isle becoming a peninsula at low tide.
Remains of a 5th century fort have been found on the Tor. This was replaced by the medieval St. Michael's church that remained until 1275. According to the British Geological Survey's, an earthquake was recorded on 11 September 1275 which was felt in London, Canterbury and Wales and this quake was what destroyed the church of St. Michael, Glastonbury Tor. The quake is reported to have destroyed many houses and churches in England. It is suggested that the quake had a magnitude of well over 7 MSK and it is possible that the epicentre of the quake was in the area around Portsmouth or Chichester, South England.
A second church, built in the 1360s, survived until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when the Tor was the place of execution where Richard Whyting the last Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey was hanged, drawn and quartered along with two of his monks. The remains of St. Michael's Tower were restored in modern times. It is a grade I listed building and is managed by the National Trust.
The site of the fair held at the foot of the Tor is embodied in the traditional name of "Fair Field" given to an agricultural enclosure, the enclosures in the local landscape dating from the 18th century.
Mythology
The Tor has been associated with the name Avalon, and identified, since the alleged discovery of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's neatly labelled coffins in 1191, with the legendary hero King Arthur. Modern archaeology has revealed a fort, dated to the 5th century.
With the 19th-century resurgence of interest in Celtic mythology, the Tor became associated with Gwyn ap Nudd, who was first Lord of the Underworld, and later King of the Fairies. The Tor came to be represented as an entrance to Annwn or Avalon, the land of the fairies.
A persistent myth of more modern origin is that of the Glastonbury Zodiac, an astrological zodiac of gargantuan proportions said to have been carved into the land along ancient hedgerows and trackways. The theory was first put forward in 1927 by Katherine Maltwood, an artist with an interest in the occult, who thought the zodiac was constructed approximately 5,000 years ago. The vast majority of the land said to be covered by the zodiac was, at the proposed time of its construction, under several feet of water.
Christopher Hodapp asserts in his book The Templar Code For Dummies that Glastonbury Tor is one of the possible locations of the Holy Grail. This is because it is the location of the monastery that housed the Nanteos Cup.
Another speculation is that the Tor was reshaped into a spiral maze for use in religious ritual, incorporating the myth that the Tor was the location of the underworld king's spiral castle.