Glastonbury Abbey was a monastery in Glastonbury, Somerset, England. Its ruins are open as a visitor attraction.
The abbey was founded in the 7th century and enlarged in the 10th. It was destroyed by a major fire in 1184 but subsequently rebuilt and by the 14th century was one of the richest and most powerful monasteries in England. The abbey controlled large tracts of surrounding land and was instrumental in major drainage projects on the Somerset Levels. The abbey was suppressed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII of England. The last abbot, Richard Whiting (Whyting), was hanged, drawn and quartered as a traitor on Glastonbury Tor in 1539.
From at least the 12th century the Glastonbury area has been associated with the legend of King Arthur, a connection promoted by medieval monks who asserted that Glastonbury was Avalon. Christian legends have claimed that the abbey was founded by Joseph of Arimathea in the 1st century.
In 1184, a great fire at Glastonbury destroyed the monastic buildings. Reconstruction began almost immediately and the Lady Chapel, which includes the well, was consecrated in 1186. There is evidence that, in the 12th century, the ruined nave was renovated enough for services while the great new church was being constructed. Parts of the walls of the aisle and crossing having been completed by 1189, progress then continued more slowly.[31]
Pilgrim visits had fallen and in 1191 the alleged discovery of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere‘s tomb in the cemetery provided fresh impetus for visiting Glastonbury. A contemporaneous, though not an eyewitness account was given by Giraldus Cambrensis in his De principis instructione («Instruction of a Prince,» ca. 1193) and recollected in his Speculum Ecclesiae, ca. 1216 according to which the abbot, Henry de Sully, commissioned a search, discovering at the depth of 16 feet (5 m) a massive hollowed oak trunk containing two skeletons. Above it, under the covering stone, according to Giraldus, was a leaden cross with the unmistakably specific inscription Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia («Here lies interred the famous King Arthur on the Isle of Avalon«).
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