705 AD - King Ine founded a monastery here, which became a Benedictine house in the 10^th Century.

1184 AD - The church which was built, according to tradition, by Joseph of Arimathea (the man who took Jesus to his tomb), was destroyed in this year.

1190 AD - Monks claimed to have discovered the grave of King Arthur and Guinevere. The grave in the Abbey grounds was discovered after the secret of the burial was revealed by a Welsh bard to King Henry II. The King then informed the Abbot of Glastonbury and, eventually, when rebuilding the Abbey after the fire of 1184 AD, the monks searched again for the grave. About 2m down they found a stone slab and lead across inscribed ‘hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex arturius in insula avalonia’, which means ‘here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon’. About 2.7m below the slab was a coffin cut from a hollow log containing the bones of a 2.4m man with a damaged skull, as well as smaller bones with a scrap of yellow hair. The original grave is 15m from the south door of the Lady Chapel. (1).

1278 AD - The bones were re-interred in a black marble tomb before the high altar. (1)

The Abbey Church was built in the 13^th and 14^th centuries, of which substantial remains still exist.

The 'Chalice' or 'Blood' Well- A spring-water well. (Also called ‘Blood spring’ because the waters are tinted with iron-oxide). Legend tells how the shaft of the well was built of huge stones by the druids and that later, the Chalice used at the ‘last supper’ (the Holy Grail), was thrown into its waters. Sir Norman Lockyer noted that the style of construction was similar to that seen in ancient Egypt.

Archaeo-Astronomy - Glastonbury lies on the 'St. Michael's ley-line' which crosses the whole country along the same azimuth as the mid-summer setting sun. The alignment is connected through several Christianised ancient sites named after St. Michael and St. George, both of which are known as Dragon-slayers. This combination of serpent and solar worship is reminiscent of William Stuckley's vision of the ancient (megalithic) British landscape. The Tor's association with astronomy is reinforced by extremely accurate geometric connections with Stonehenge (see below).

Alignments - Glastonbury Tor has been identified as a part of the St. Michael's Ley Line or 'Corridor of Incidence', which is astronomical in nature, but it is also part of a vast geometric 'decagon' discovered by John Michell and it forms an isosceles triangle with Avebury and Stonehenge. (Both of these geometric alignments are accurate to within 1/1000th parts). It also lies on the path of numerous ley-lines and several other alignments traversing the English landscape.

References:

1). The atlas of mysterious places. Guild publishing. 1987.