Glastonbury Tor, South West, England

The Glastonbury Tor is a location surrounded by legend, mythology and paganism. Excavations have found Neolithic tools and Roman artefacts.  The location has been used since ancient times but it is unknown if the terracing on the side of the hill is natural or man-made if man-made it would date from the Neolithic period.

Today the Tor has the remains of a 14th century church of which only the tower still stands.  This church was built to replace an earlier church on the site. It was common Christian practice to build churches on locations that were significant to paganism so that new associations with the location would be made. This seemed to have worked in the middle ages as the Tor became a place of pilgrimage.

Legends tell us that the Glastonbury Tor is the Isle of Avalon, the meeting place of the dead from which they passed into another existence.

The landscape we see today has changed and in the past, before the Somerset levels were drained, the Tor would have been an island surrounded by water.