When people speak of Glastonbury, chances are they are talking about the massive festival that occurs there every year.
I was startled to see a woman dressed in full Earth Mother robes perusing the bric-a-brac- André Raine
What started in the early 1970s as a hippie, free-love folk festival on a farmer’s empty field swiftly gathered momentum and has now become a multi-million pound machine, attracting huge headlining acts and an annual gathering of over 150,000 people.
If you’ve been, no doubt your mind will be transported to images of the huge press of crowds, massive tents and stages, invariably a lot of rain and mud, dubious camping conditions and (if you like that sort of music) some pretty impressive acts. Alternatively, after three days of festival mayhem, perhaps your memories will be a bewildered blur.
Either way, mention of Glastonbury doesn’t tend to evoke recollections of the town itself, nestled in the Somerset countryside of southern England, and imbued with a curious medieval charm intertwined with the flower-child, crystal-wielding ethos central to thefestival’s early origins.
We visited Glastonbury in late July, a month after the maddening festival hordes had been and gone. Despite a lack of festival, the town was still surprisingly busy with tourists roaming in and out of shops and visiting the attractions or attending the ‘Goddess’ convention.
Looming over the town was the barren hill of Glastonbury Tor, topped by the remains of St Michael’s Tower. Steeped in mythology, the Tor itself is linked to everything from King Arthur to landscape-sized zodiacs, spiral mazes and Gwyn ap Nudd – the latter being the Celtic first Lord of the Underworld.
In the 19th century the Tor came to represent the entrance to Avalon, or the land of the fairies. With this kind of background, it seemed churlish not to trek up to the summit, which we duly did. While we didn’t encounter any fairies, there were a lot of curious sheep, and the view from the summit encompassed the vast expanse of the flat Somerset Levels – a view that is quintessentially English.
Trudging back down, side-stepping the occasional offering from the omnipresent sheep, we passed the entrance of a World Peace Garden, home to the Chalice Well. The Chalice Well is considered one of the most holy wells in Britain, whose waters are thought to be the essence of life – linked either to Mother Earth or the blood of Christ (depending on who you ask).
Curious, we stepped inside. After handing over the entrance fee to a kindly-looking woman clad in floral dress who earnestly chatted to us about the fairies inhabiting the garden grounds (of which she was quite serious), we walked into the garden proper.
It was indeed a peaceful place. People sat in quiet contemplation near trickling streams and bright sprays of flowers.
Our two-year old soon put peace and tranquillity to the test, enthusiastically drinking water from the Lion’s Head Fountain and splashing about in the Healing Pool (which, I hasten to add, was allowed). I had to admit the gardens were thoughtfully arranged, with many a nook and cranny to sit and relax.
One could visit the imposing Guardian Yews, peer into the Wellhead, sit on the Angel Seat and take in the atmosphere of the Living Sanctuary. All of which we did.
Now feeling at one with our inner child, we headed back out again. I was amused to see a sign placed over the fetid water pooling in a roadside gutter which said (probably without a trace of irony) ‘This is not a healing stream, please do not drink the water’ – a caution to the more enthusiastic visiting pilgrim. While the water didn’t really look particularly enticing, we were feeling thirsty and so retired to a small café in the centre of town to sip a healing cappuccino and contemplate our next move.
Outside on the street, a lady with flowers in her hair and a homespun dress sat on the pavement and sang a weeping lament, accompanied by a man playing a rough hewn harp. Bare-footed New Agers trotted by alongside camera-clutching tourists, peering into shops with names like ‘Man, Myth and Magik’, ‘Elestial’ and ‘Cat and Cauldron’.
If you wanted to buy healing crystals, paintings of magical goddesses, a large and remarkably realistic Celtic sword, or the latest fashion in Druidic robes, this appeared to be the high street for you. The local charity thrift store had a sign up saying ‘Goddesses and Cats Welcome’, and I was startled to see a woman dressed in full Earth Mother robes wandering in to peruse the bric-a-brac.
She had to duck to avoid the life-size and mechanised flying fairies whirling around on the ceiling. I inspected my cappuccino suspiciously, but all seemed in order, and the strange reality of Glastonbury continued unabated outside.
Having had had our fill of fairies, we moved on to the sprawling ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, dating back to the seventh century. Once one of the richest and most powerful abbeys in England, the site was also purported to contain the final resting place of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, although there is some suspicion that this was simply a monastic attempt to bolster the pilgrim trade to the area.
Unfortunately for the monks, the abbey fell to Henry VIII and his Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the last abbot was hung, drawn and quartered for his troubles on Glastonbury Tor in 1539. Regardless, the abbey was worth visiting.
While King Henry’s destructive efforts had put pay to several of the abbey’s structures, the ruins of the Great Church, the Lady Chapel and the Abbot’s Kitchen were among the imposing structures set within the 36 acres of parkland. The sheer size of some of the walls and remaining gates left one in no doubt of what an imposing place this must have been.
After an hour of roaming the abbey grounds and chatting to various people dressed in medieval robes (who may or may not have been play-acting), we headed back to our car.
Behind us, the New Agers and the hippies, the Earth Goddesses and the tourists continued their Glastonbury pilgrimage…