It extended across the marsh between what was then an island at Westhay, and a ridge of high ground at Shapwick, a distance close to 2,000 metres (1.2 mi). The track was discovered in the course of peat digging in 1970, and is named after its discoverer, Ray Sweet. It has been claimed to be the oldest road in the world. Tree-ring dating ( dendrochronology) of the timbers has enabled very precise dating of the track, showing it was built in 3807 or 3806 BC. These included the Sweet Track, west of Glastonbury, which is one of the oldest engineered roads known and was the oldest timber trackway discovered in Northern Europe, until the 2009 discovery of a 6,000-year-old trackway in Belmarsh Prison. The Neolithic people continued to exploit the reedswamps for their natural resources and started to construct wooden trackways. The Glastonbury Festival, held in the nearby village of Pilton, takes its name from the town.ĭuring the 7th millennium BC the sea level rose and flooded the valleys and low-lying ground surrounding Glastonbury so the Mesolithic people occupied seasonal camps on the higher ground, indicated by scatters of flints. The presence of a landscape zodiac around the town has been suggested but no evidence has been discovered. Joseph is said to have arrived in Glastonbury and stuck his staff into the ground, when it flowered miraculously into the Glastonbury Thorn. It is notable for myths and legends often related to Glastonbury Tor, concerning Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur.
Glastonbury has been described as having a New Age community and possibly being where New Age beliefs originated at the turn of the twentieth century. The Brue Valley Living Landscape is a conservation project managed by the Somerset Wildlife Trust and nearby is the Ham Wall National Nature Reserve. The town became a centre for commerce, which led to the construction of the market cross, Glastonbury Canal and the Glastonbury and Street railway station, the largest station on the original Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway. The Church of St John the Baptist dates from the 15th century. Many of the oldest surviving buildings in the town, including the Tribunal, George Hotel and Pilgrims' Inn and the Somerset Rural Life Museum, which is based at the site of a 14th-century abbey manor barn, often referred to as a tithe barn, are associated with the abbey. One of the most important abbeys in England, it was the site of Edmund Ironside's coronation as King of England in 1016. Centwine was the first Saxon patron of Glastonbury Abbey, which dominated the town for the next 700 years. Glastonbury Lake Village was an Iron Age village, close to the old course of the River Brue and Sharpham Park approximately 2 miles (3 km) west of Glastonbury, that dates back to the Bronze Age. Glastonbury is less than 1 mile (2 km) across the River Brue from Street, which is now larger than Glastonbury.Įvidence from timber trackways such as the Sweet Track show that the town has been inhabited since Neolithic times. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbury ( / ˈ ɡ l æ s t ən b r i/, UK also / ˈ ɡ l ɑː s-/) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, 23 miles (37 km) south of Bristol.
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