Hey folks!
This past Thursday’s excursion (March 5, 2009) was to Glastonbury and Wells.
At 9 am, I was at the coach park (parking lot for busses) to meet Arleen (our bus). .. Yes, our bus has a name .. I should take a picture of her next time for you guys so you believe me.
We first headed off to Glastonbury.
Glastonbury is a very small town not far from Bath with a huge history. Glastonbury’s history includes Jesus Christ, the Holy Grail and King Arthur.
We got a tour of the Glastonbury Abbey. Our tour guide was a lady who works at the Abbey. At the beginning of the tour, she told us that everything she will tell us not necessarily fact, but it is what is believed here. A lot of it has great support, and some might be myth. We are to decide for ourselves what is real and not. I guess the same goes to you from my rendition.
First though, this is me using the “Dog Loo”
(For you slower ones, loo is bathroom here. I hear it all the time, like when someone needs to go, and I am using the only bathroom in the house.)
Anyway. The most important place of history in this place is that is it believed that the first church, (EVER), was built here. It was built by Jesus’ great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea in Glastonbury, which was then pretty much an island at the time. The guide told us there are a few stories of how this happened, it might have been just Joseph who built it after Jesus told him to, it might have been them together, or it could have been Jesus. All three of those stories could be true. That original church burned down in a big fire that still shows in an ash layer underground. When it burned down, they built the huge stone church that is the Glastonbury Abbey. This one was built in 712. If I understand correctly, this is the first stone church.
The church was destroyed by King Henry VIII in the 1500’s. The ruins still stand.
The other famous legend of this place was that King Arthur lived somewhere close to here. His and his wife, Guinevere’s bones/bodies were discovered here in 1191, and were later reburied on the property of the Abbey. It is said that the Holy Grail is hidden somewhere here, but of course, no one has ever found it.
We also got a lecture in the Abbot’s kitchen (Abbot= main guy in the Abbey), about how the monks lived in this church, what they ate and did. That was pretty interesting. The life of a monk sounds very hard, but it was a lot better than the poor life in England. At least they had good food to eat everyday.
After the Glastonbury Abbey, we all took a hike up to the Glastonbury Tor. A Tor is a big hill, basically. This one is famous for St. Michael's Tower, which is at the top of the Tor, as well as being part of the King Arthur legends and the last Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey was hung there when King Henry VIII ordered the Abbey be destroyed.
It was quite a hike to get up there. It didn’t look that far from the bottom, but it took a lot of energy to get up all those stairs. The view from the top was great though.
We then had a little free time to get lunch and check out the town. The town, like I said, is pretty tiny. After a delicious pasty, cookie and milkshake (I know.. I’m a pig), we checked out the town, but there wasn’t much to see. The town is known as “alternative”. The shops are kind of a hippie-ish/witchcraft theme. There weren’t many, and they were very small.
Anyway, we boarded Arleen to head to Wells. In Wells, we also got an official tour of a cathedral, this time the Wells Cathedral. This one is from 1239. If you look closely, you can see statues on the building. There are about 300 of them all around the cathedral. Each a statue of a real person in history. Not all are identified of who they are statues of.
This is from the inside:
It did look a little strange that there were modern looking inverted arches. (Look at the first picture, the far back.. left half of the photo). Our tour guide explained that they are not modern at all. They are from 1338 from when some of the cathedral started “sinking” into the ground and something needed to be done. An architect thought of this idea. The X arches are attached to the main columns to keep them supporting each other and it has kept the cathedral together all the way to today.
This big stained glass window is from 1340.
And this is the oldest piece of wooden furniture. It dates back to 1120.
See, told ya.
This clock is the second-oldest surviving clock in England. It was made in 1390. Isn’t that incredible? According to Wikipedia, the original mechanism is still running, but it is now in the Museum of London, not here.
The outer hand, the sun, is the hour hand. It's a 24 hour circle, so being at 3 o'clock, it looks like 1:30, but its 3. The minute hand is the star in the circle second from outside. Its at the bottom a little to the right.. see it? It was 3:28 or so when I took that picture.
Do you like this “picture tour” of what I saw?
The next picture is of a weird staircase leading up to the Chapter House. This was basically a courtroom in the church.
When we walked into the Chapter Room, I heard a lot of people have the same reaction. The room felt like heaven. We had to walk up a staircase to walk into this very bright, white room.
(It doesn’t look bright in this next picture, but trust me, it looked more like the previous picture .. I just wanted to put in the next one because I like it.)
The defendant would sit on that center circle seat, and all the important men of the court would sit around the outside. There is a seat for each one. (See the plaques with names at the top of each seat?)
Lastly, the tour guide walked us to the famous little enclosed little choir men’s street. This street and houses were built in 1363 so that the choir men of the cathedral had a safe place to live. Still to this day, the only people who live on this street are the choir men and other people who are employed by the cathedral.
So, as you can see, this tour was all about old, historic cathedrals. To me, it is just unbelievable to see buildings from 800 years ago that are standing strong. I don’t know anything about architecture, and it is overwhelming for me to try to understand how well these cathedrals were built to still stand after so long. It also blows my mind that the people of the 1100’s were so sophisticated in how to do this.
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