Glastonbury Abbey - King Arthurs Tomb

King Arthur's Tomb - Glastonbury Abbey

After returning from The Tor to the centre of Glastonbury, and after a lovely lunch and time to see the center of the city, we joined our guide, who he calls his name as Tor, 

and he took us in to the tomb of King Arthur.  

Inside the information building of Abbey, Tor informed us about the picture above and
what had been provided of the set-up which was classified as the original form of the area
of the Abbey monastery. We were also told that the old Celtic name had been
classified as the Island of Glass.

The abbey was founded by Britons in the early-7th century. It was enlarged in the10th 

century from the Norman structures but by 1184 it was destroyed by a major fire and many 

of the ancient treasures were consumed. As we left the information building we walked across 

to the main abbey which we had seen from inside the building. This structure is classified 

as the Lady Chappell.

We then walked down to the base of the main area of Lady Chappel, which is lower than 

the main area of all of the places of Abbey, as seen here. The abbey was rebuilt after it had 

been destroyed. By the 14th century it was one of the richest and powerful monasteries in England. 

This burial vault is an aspect under the  main base of Lady Chappel, seen on the previous 

photo. The occupation of the site is classified as the Dark Age time. There is also evidence 

that pieces of ceramic wine jars that were brought in from the Mediterranean.

This second level is seen from the base area of the Lady Chappel. After we had 

finished receiving information of the base area we then moved to the higher level so that 

we were also able to walk outside of the west area. We could then walk up to see all 

of these aspects focus on the structures of the south area.

This photo shows where we had just been down below under the Lady Chappel. After moving 

outside of the western area we then continued to walk up to the higher level aspect of Lady 

Chappel.  The south area of these stairs of Lady Chappel is the place to see the 

King Arthur's tomb.

Many hundreds of years ago there had been groups who chose to remove special pieces of the
monastery buildings and to add them to other particular places in Somerset. This is what you
can see has occurred on the two buildings on the left side of this photo.

On the west side of the Lady Chappel towards the main chappel is 

the site where the monks dug to find the tomb of the ancient graveyard and to 

find King Arthur and his Queen Guinevere in 1191.

The Glastonbury area has been associated with the legend of King Arthur from the 

12th century. Medieval monks were believed to assert that Glastonbury was known as Avalon.

The Arthurian mythic angle is where the sword Excalibur was originally forged on the 

Isle of Avalon. After being mortally wounded King Arthur was brought here by his nephew, 

Mordred, in the Battle of Camlann.

Monks chose to raise extra funds from pilgrims to rebuild the abbey near the area of the 

King Arthur tomb. The bones raised from the cemetery were seen at this time on the 

south side of the Lady Chapel.

The bones were then reburied in 1278 within the Abbey Church in a black marble tomb. 

It also shows that there were Roman and Saxon occupations of the site, and there has been 

excavations of Romano-Brittish of pottery uncovered at the west end of the cloister.

A Christian legend claimed that the abbey was founded by Joseph of Arimathea in the
1st century. Glastonbury fell in to Saxon hands in 658 after the Battle of Peonnum.
The Saxons conquered Somerset as far west as the River Parrett.

The west area outside of the Abbot's Kitchen is where this block of stone is thought to
be a special rested information that was initally placed on King Arthur and
Queen Guinevere's burial cemetery.

Inside Abbot's Kitchen are four large arched fireplaces with smoke outlets above them,
and with another outlet high up in the centre of the pyramidal roof.

                           The stone-built construction dates from the 14th century and is one of a 
                                              very few surviving mediaeval kitchens in the world.

The kitchen was attached to the Abbot's Hall of 24m high, but there is now only one 

small section of its wall remaining. The Abbot of Glastonbury was seen as considerable 

levels of tremendous power.

This legend is tied to the version of the Holy Grail and Glastonbury's connection with 

King Arthur from the early-12th century. When we had finished seeing all of the aspect of the abbot 

we were brought to this small area to relax and wait for our group to move 

outside to the main centre.

The next place we are going to is to see the area of Mary Magdalene's chapel.