The legend of its founding by Joseph of Arimathea has been easily proven wrong by the complete lack of archaeological evidence that anything Christian existed there in the 1st century CE. Robert de Boron connects Glastonbury to King Arthur and the Holy Grail, but his mention of Joseph does not include bringing Joseph to Glastonbury.
The earliest evidence for an abbey comes from the 7th century. William of Malmesbury records a grant of land made to the "old church" at Glastonbury in 601 from King Gwrgan of Damnonia. The town of Glastonbury fell into Saxon hands in c.660 when they defeated the Britons of Somerset. The Saxon leader, Cenwalh of Wessex, was a Christian, so the abbey was not harmed.
King Ine of Wessex a couple decades later made gifts to the monks at Glastonbury Abbey and directed that a stone church be built. It was enlarged in the 10th century by Abbot (later Saint) Dunstan, who made it a Benedictine monastery.
The abbey instituted some projects to drain excess water from the surrounding Somerset Levels, a coastal plain and wetland area that covers about 160,000 acres. This made the land more suitable for farming. The Abbey also created the Glastonbury Canal to link it with the River Brue (a little more than a mile away) to more easily transport goods to and from the Abbey. The Abbey was important and prosperous enough to import ceramic wine jars from the Mediterranean.
William the Conqueror wanted to control the wealth of Glastonbury, so in 1086 he appointed a Norman named Turstinus as its abbot. Turstinus expanded the church. In Domesday Book, Glastonbury Abbey was listed as the richest monastery in the country.
How did it go from the richest in the country to the ruin we see in the illustration? Well, of course we'll go into that tomorrow.
