[Magdalen] St Michael's, Glastonbury Tor.

[Roger Stokes]

Looking at 
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/glastonbury-tor/view/?service=0 
there is room on the ridge for a relatively small nave.  They did not 
need a large nave to accommodate a lot of people but they wanted a tower 
that could be seen for miles around.  It must be over 20 years since I 
was there around the turn of the year and walked up the Tor and 
certainly I had no sense that the tower was anything but what waqs 
claimed - all that remained of a church.

Ground penetrating radar might well indicate the remains of walls but in 
the absence of such evidence I am still prepared to accept that there 
was a church on that site.  Given the flooding that can (and does) occur 
in that area a prominent tower on a natural hill would have been 
reassuring to the faithful.

Roger

On 22/09/2014 19:57, M J [Mike] Logsdon wrote:
> I confess to being obsessed with this thing.  Mainly in how the modern description of its past jives with today's physical reality.  From Wikipedia:
>
> "St Michael's Church survived until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when, except for the tower, it was demolished....  The three-storey tower of St Michael's Church survives.  It has corner buttresses and perpendicular bell openings.  There is a sculptured tablet with an image of an eagle below the parapet."
>
> I've looked at several aerial photos, and for the life of me I can't figure out where the rest of the church was in relation to the hill.  There simply appears to be no room, unless what was destroyed was very, very small.  Plus, why no ruins whatsoever of what was destroyed?  (If there are any, the photos I've seen don't do them justice.)
>
> And if you want a real treat, look up Glastonbury Tor on Google Earth.  The shadow of the tower is there, but not the tower.  Or is it what appears to be lying lengthwise across the top, and we're only talking an unavoidable trick of that sort of photography?
> _________________________________________
> "O perplexed discomposition, O riddling
> distemper, O miserable condition of man!"
> - The Rev Mr John Donne
> (in a not-so-chipper moment)
>