Getting our Kicks on the A66. Part One.

As the great J.R.R. Tolkien once observed, "The Road goes Ever On".

As people who drive up and down this beautiful island of ours (and occasionally drive onto boats so that we can drive on other islands too) we are pretty reliant on roads, to be honest. It is fair to say though, that not all roads are created equal - the M25, for example is clearly evil and to be avoided at all costs unless you want to watch aircraft on the approach to Heathrow, in which case try and get stuck in a traffic jam just south of the M4 and you're golden.*

The A1 on the other hand must be one of the greatest roads in Britain, linking as it does two of the Capital cities of the home nations, Edinburgh and London, taking you through some astonishing landscapes - both rural and industrial - on the way. Not for nothing was it once known as the *Great North Road".** And then there's the A66. That fine ribbon of asphalt that links the North East with the North West of England which we always think of as the end of the first leg of the Long High Road to the foot of the Great Glen, or the start of the last leg home.

In all our years of traversing the road, however, we have seldom paused to see the sights it promises. This is a shame, because as you might expect for a road that runs through the Counties of North Yorkshire, Country Durham and Cumbria it's a pretty ancient way across the Northern Pennines. As a result there is a lot of history en route.

Since our base at Snail Towers is centred in the heart of North Yorkshire it makes sense to begin our exploration at the eastern end. Now. Officially the '66 begins just outside Middlesborough, that fine town at North Yorkshire's most northern tip. However, according to all modern maps it then disappears when it hits the A1, and then reappears a few miles south at the historic junction known as "Scotch Corner" just north of the ancient Yorkshire town of Richmond, which is where we always join it, and where our little odyssey will start.

An indication of how rich in delights this road actually is comes almost immediately, as you leave Scotch Corner in your wake you are almost immediately informed that taking a right hand turn will lead you to the The Bowes Museum in the town of Barnard Castle. I confess that we drove past this sign for several years before we investigated, each time commenting that "we really ought to go and have a look at that".

We were right.

The Bowes Museum is a truly remarkable institution. By far the largest building in Barnard Castle the museum is housed in a former stately home - a building which has a pretty interesting history in its own right. It was built in the French style for John and Josephine Bowes, a couple every bit as interesting as the magnificent building they had constructed.

John was the illegitimate son of the 10th Earl of Strathmore and a "commoner" (I really hate that phrase, but it's the one that would have been used at the time), Mary Millner, who had been a servant at the Strathmore Estate, caught the Earl's eye and ended up living - for all intents and purposes except the legal ones - as his wife. The Earl finally married Mary on his death bead, presumably in a rather belated attempt to restore some honour to Mary in an age when living "in sin" was a cause for deep social shame and approbation, and to legitimise their son.

I've not found much out about Mary's later life, so I don't know if it worked for her or not. Things most certainly did not go according to plan for John. After two of the drawn out court cases that the Victorians loved so much he was not recognised as the legitimate heir to the Strathmore Estates, which in the end passed to the 10th Earl's younger brother Thomas, who also took the title of 11th Earl. John was not disinherited completely, however, and the families lands in Durham were settled on him.

Educated at Eton - because titled or not, he was still the son of an Earl and there are some things that you just do - young John went on to be come pretty wealthy by utilising the coal resources on his land, eventually being able to split his time between England and France pursuing his growing interest in art. It was in Paris, at the Théatre des Variétés (which he happened to own) that John met Josephine, an actress and painter. They were married in 1852 and began to amass the bulk of what would become the core of the collection now housed at the museum which bears their name.

Josephine Bowes laid the foundation stone of the extravagant and palatial new home for their collections in 1869. Sadly she never saw the building completed, dying in 1874. John Bowes himself also died before the completion of the project, in 1885. By the time of his death though, the museum project had caught on amongst the local set and it's future was secured. The museum finally opened in 1892 attracting a pretty impressive 63,000 visitors in its first year. (For scale, that's nearly eleven times the actual current population of the town of Barnard Castle itself.)

It's not difficult to see the attraction though.

You can easily spend a full day exploring the exhibitions and galleries. The place has pretty much everything, from social history artefacts, paintings, sculpture, it is a genuine treasure trove of endless fascination. there is, however, a clear star of the show. A star that shines so brightly it has become the logo for the whole institution. The wonderful Silver Swan.

I shot video of this when we were there, but Blogger is obstinately refusing to let me embed it here, so instead I'll just link you to some footage on YouTube so you can see what I'm talking about. This masterpiece of automata is exactly what the name suggests, a life sized sculpture of a swam (a mute swan, if we're going to be specific) fashioned out of silver. When activated it swims on a rippling silver pond, flexes its neck as it looks around, before plucking a little silver fish from the silver water and gulping it down.

It is exquisite, and well worth the visit in its own right, even if there weren't paintings by the likes of Goya and Cezanne to appreciate as well.

Its origins are a little unclear - we know it was constructed in 1773 by John Joseph Merlin, a well known and respected inventor of the day and that in 1774 it was a part of the exhibition of London showman James Cox. We know that it was a part of the 1867 Paris Exhibition because the great American novelist Mark Twain not only saw it, but wrote about it in The Innocents Abroad. He seems to have been rather impressed - no small thing for a cumudgeon like Twain.

The Swan became a part of the museum collection for the princely sum of £200 in 1872 and now it lives in isolated majesty in a glass case in the centre of its own room on the third floor of the museum and is ceremonially brought to life for forty glorious seconds every day at two p.m. sharp. Our advice is to get there early, because it really does draw the crowds and space can actually be limited.

I think it's pretty certain that if you like museums you're going to want to spend most of a day here. Fortunately the Bowes Cafe offers a fantastic choice of hot and cold food - I can personally recommend the "Yorkshire Rarebit" - and even serves breakfast, so if you get there for doors open, you needn't explore the exhibits hungry!

All that, and we've barely started!

As the A66 draws you ever further westward you'll find yourself in some pretty green farming country - and about four miles for Scotch Corner you might well spot some unexpected beasts to the left hand side of the road. We'd actually driven past a few times and said to each other "I'm sure I just saw a camel" and "was that an ostrich?" before we paid proper attention and confirmed to ourselves that we weren't going mad.

Although it wasn't an ostrich. That would have been silly.

We've never actually stopped there (there are issues with allergies to things with fur here at Snail Towers) but Mainsgill Farm does indeed have a magnificent two humped Bactrian camel that their website informs me is called Delilah.  Delilah would appear to have a calf called Camelot, and the pair share the farm with Lamas, Alpachas, Rheas (a South American ostrich like bird, which is what we saw on the way past) and yes, actual ostriches, so our sighting wasn't so silly after all...

As well as the exotic animals, farm shop and tea room, Mainsgill is also a working livestock farm, and their shop can sell you any number of high quality meat based products so if you're pitched up in the area and want something special for dinner (and you're not a vegetarian) the place is probably doubly worth a call. Who knows, next time we're in the area we might stock up on the anti-histamine tablets and investigate in more detail. We'll let you know...

It's not the only eye catching farm based landmark in that neck of the woods either. almost exactly due south of the Bowes Museum the '66 takes you past a remarkable looking building with a turf roof which will invariably have sheep grazing on it. It's another of the landmarks of the eastern A66 that we have always remarked upon but never visited. Cross Lanes Farm is a multi-award winning organic farm with the by now almost obligatory cafe/restaurant and some serious eco-credentials.

Again, there's a well stocked farm shop where, as well as vegetables, artizan breads and other scrummy sounding foodstuffs you can also buy the farms rare breed pork, grass fed short horn beef, farm cured bacon and any amount of other meaty delights.

Oh, and one of those eye catching sheep on the roof? It's called "Roofus".

But we're still at the very start of the A66's journey into the west. Time to put the foot down a little and speed on our way. Ahead lie castles, food, hills, crosses and then the majesty of the Lake District.

Join us next time and the road goes ever on...






*Yes, I have done this. Not even sorry.

**Oh, all right. So that's not exactly true. Large sections of the old Great North Road are indeed beneath the surface of the modern A1, but the GNR tended to run through town centres and so large sections of it still exist in their own right - and are even still called the Great North Road -there's certainly a long section in my hometown of Doncaster that is still so named.

Fly Navy!

Regular readers my have gathered that I really like aircraft.

I mean, I like aircraft a lot.

I like aircraft to the point that Mrs Snail has been known to decide against a potential campsite because it was too near either an active airfield or an air museum and she knew that if we stayed there I'd essentially do noting but watch planes for the duration of our stay.

Which is not to say that I don't get to see a lot of aircraft on our travels - because I do. Our favourite site at Grummore/Altnaharra in the northern Highlands has afforded us flypasts by pairs of American F-15 Eagles (not the kind of eagles we were looking for at the time, but I was pleased to see them), Typhoons, Tornados and C-130 Hercules planes. Our regular stop at Bunree just south of Fort William has also afforded us close up views of RAF planes and helicopters from the RAF, Royal Navy and HM Coastguard. And of course if you read the recent post about Glastonbury Tor you know that I was treated to a show by three Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters operating from the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton about thirteen miles south of the iconic hillock.*

And you see, the thing is that Yeovilton is not just an active Naval Air Station, where all manner of aircraft operated by the Royal Navy** can be seen going about their daily operations, it is also the home of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Museum. A place where the history of Royal Naval Aviation is recorded, explained and celebrated.

I was going to drive all that way and not take a look?

Not bloody likely!

So, off we went. the deal was simple. Mrs Snail would agree to spend a morning tolerating me drooling over planes and helicopters if in the afternoon we went and visited Thomas Hardy's Cottage, which is maintained by the National Trust, open to the public and located not all that far away.

We arrived at the Air Station just before the Museum opened at ten o'clock. It was easy to find and the massive car park meant that parking was no problem whatsoever, which meant we were through the entrance hall and into the displays literally as the doors opened. For an aircraft nut like me it was like walking into a toyshop with all the very best toys. I would have been more than happy just wandering aimlessly around staring open mouthed at the historic naval aircraft - from the slightly battered fuselage of a Short 184 (the oldest naval aircraft in the world) to the mighty Sea Harrier - the last truly naval fixed wing aircraft flown by the Fleet Air Arm, and all points in between.

Didn't do that though, because just as we were about to sally forth into the displays we noticed a sign informing us that if we hung around for about a quarter of an hour there would be a free guided tour of the exhibits. So we waited.

Well worth the wait.

Our guide was knowledgeable, enthusiastic and entertaining - he'd flown in Buccaneer's back in the nineteen seventies and his love not only of flying, but of the Royal Navy as a whole shone through his descriptions of the aircraft and the ships they operated from and we learned a lot.

Our guide took us around the first two exhibition halls and showed us models of Aircraft Carriers from the Second World War using them to explain why angled flight decks were such an important development in the post war years*** as well as the reason the Royal Navy has returned to linear flight decks for its carriers since the eighties.**** He showed us planes that operated in the First World War, before the Royal Naval Air Service merged with the Royal Flying Corps to form the RAF, and planes from the Second World War, such as the beautiful Seafire, the maritime version of the Spitfire, and the venerable Swordfish - a biplane which served with some distinction as a torpedo bomber.

I could go on, but essentially what you'd get is a long list of all the types of aircraft featured in the museum. I'd enjoy writing that, but I accept that it might not make the most gripping reading.

So, suffice to say that we enjoyed the tour immensely.

At this point I would normally share some pictures of these wonderful airframes. I took a lot. Trouble is, I can't find them anywhere. This is particularly disappointing because of what we went to look at after the tour.

Our wonderful guide ended our tour at the entrance to exhibition hall three - the home of the "Aircraft Carrier Experience". This is no ordinary exhibition hall. Oh no.

For a start, you cannot simply walk in. No, you have to wait until the helicopter is ready to ferry you out there - it's supposed to be an Aircraft Carrier, after all. You board the chopper with a dozen or so fellow museum visitors, the door closes behind you and you feel the vehicle vibrating beneath your feet. During the short "flight" a brief video announcement fills you in on what to expect when you land, then you feel a mild jolt which indicates that you've landed, the door slides open and you've arrived.

Alighting from the helicopter you find yourself on the flight deck of the Ark Royal one of the Royal Navy's traditional carriers - that is to say, not one of the Invincible class mini carriers designed for the Sea Harrier*****, but one of the big jobs that carried the likes of the Sea Vixen, the Buccaneer and the Phantom. The kind of ship that didn't see the end of the seventies but that everyone to occupy the office of the First Sea Lord since has wanted to resurrect.

The deck area is occupied by several historic aircraft that would have operated from the Navy's carriers over the years - the venerable practical ugliness of the Fairey Gannet, an airbourne early warning aircraft, the sleek lines of the Supermarine Scimitar and the Hawker Seahawk, the huge wingspan of the slightly off centre Sea Vixen and best of all, the menacing bulk of the Blackburn Buccaneer and the raw in your face power of the McDonnell Phantom FG1. There is even an (unsurprisingly disarmed and inert) example of one of the "Red Beard" free fall nuclear bomb that formed part of the Buccaneer's weapons capability.

So far, so ordinary. I mean, "some aircraft in an aircraft museum - so what?". Well, if you're me, being able to stand next to and put my hands on aircraft like this is enough, but I recognise that not everybody feels as passionate about this kind of thing as I do. Don't worry though, because there's a lot more to the Aircraft Carrier Experience.

We'd been perusing the aircraft for a few minutes when a voice over the tannoy warned all hands that the Phantom was about to launch. The lights dimmed. The blast screen behind the Phantom rose from the deck. The twin Rolls-Royce Spey engines lit up with an ear-splitting roar - I may be misremembering but I'd swear the ground actually shook, and then, projected onto a floor to ceiling, wall to wall screen at the far end of the deck we saw a phantom scream down the deck, dragged by the steam catapult and leap over the bow of the ship into the sky.

The illusion isn't perfect. But it very nearly is - at no time did the actual Phantom airframe move, but I'd still swear that I'd seen it take off.

The illusion was repeated a few moments later, as the tannoy advised all hands to look aft, where, projected onto another wall to wall floor to ceiling screen we could see the unmistakable outline of a Buccaneer coming in to land. By the time it dropped onto the arrestor hook and shuddered to a halt it appeared ever so slightly larger than life, before it appeared to taxi to the point where the actual Buccaneer airframe was resting.

Again, it's not a perfect illusion, but nobody standing on that flight deck cared. We could all suspend our disbelief enough to be totally taken in. The sight and sound was almost overwhelming and just felt real.

The voice came over the tannoy again, suggesting that we explore the "Island" - the Aircraft Carrier's equivalent of the Air Traffic Control Tower. I presume the next group was about to "fly in" aboard the helicopter, as by the time we'd made it to the observation level inside the Island there were more people below us watching as the the Phantom took off again.

The Island serves two purposes. First of all it gives you a sense of what life aboard ship might be like. This is important because as you walk around the spacious exhibition halls looking at aeroplanes it's easy to forget that this is a Royal Navy museum. These aircraft did not, as a rule, operate from land with the luxury of three mile long runways. These aircraft and the men****** who flew and supported them were working in cramped conditions on a deck that was never stable with a runway a few hundred yards long.

It also, via a sequence of displays illustrating how this mobile, floating military airfield was controlled and operated, guides the visitor into the forth exhibition hall, which features a Hawker P1127 - an early forerunner of the Harrier, as well as its direct descendent, a Sea Harrier which served aboard HMS Invincible during the Falkland's conflict displayed right on the end of an Invincible Class style "ski jump" as though embarking on another mission.

There are other aircraft too, a couple such as the BAC 221 and the HP 115 that, like the P1127, were seriously experimental in their day, although unlike the P1127 they were never developed into long serving, world beating aircraft like the Harrier.*******

The most interesting - and certainly the most incongruous - aircraft in the hall however is the very early example they have of the BAC Concorde. It's such an early prototype it doesn't even have the now iconic drooping nose for better visibility on take-off and landing. It is undoubtedly beautiful, and standing next to it it's striking how futuristic this astonishing supersonic machine still looks - no mean feat for an aircraft that's been here since 1976.

I remain slightly unsure what it's doing there, mind you. I mean, yes, it's a historic aircraft and a fantastic example of British (and, it has to be said, French) engineering. But it's not exactly a Naval aircraft, is it? I mean, it's not even military.

Yes, a short search on Google will lead you to all sorts of historic ideas about using Concorde as the base for a supersonic bomber, but if that had happened those planes would have gone to the RAF not the Navy. Mind you - it would be interesting watching one of these try to land on an Aircraft Carrier...

Eventually we made our way out - again via the gift shop.

An indication of how good it was? It was now knocking on to late afternoon. Not only was it too late to get to Thomas Hardy's cottage (we still haven't been) we had missed lunch!!!!!!!!!!

Yup. That good.

In all seriousness. If a museum can keep us so enthralled that we don't notice that it's lunch o'clock then that's a pretty enthralling museum. You should probably go.





*Yes, yes, but really, it isn't that tall..,

**Since 2010, basically a few varieties of helicopters. Don't get me started...

***Basically it enables aircraft to land without the risk of smashing into other aircraft on deck. Something so obvious it's hard to understand why they didn't think of it from the word go...

****The last aircraft in Royal Naval service that needed a runway were the Buccaneers and Phantoms that operated from HMS Ark Royal until she was decommissioned in 1978. Since then, everything landing in a Royal Navy ship has landed vertically, whether it was a helicopter, a Sea Harrier or a regular Harrier. Assuming it ever makes it into service the variant of the F-35 that is intended to replace the Harrier will also be landing vertically.

*****And yes, they called one of those mini carriers "HMS Ark Royal", just to confuse things. I don't mean that one. I mean the proper one that was featured in the 1970s TV series "Sailing".

******And in the times we're talking about, they were all men. The Navy has since embraced the twenty first century and women do now serve in all capacities at sea.

*******The Harrier left RAF and Royal Navy service in 2010 after defence cuts. At time of writing however the type is still in service with the Indian Navy, the Spanish Navy and the US Marine Corps.

Glastonbury Abbey.

Happy New Year!

I trust that your New Year's celebrations were suitably splendid. After the last post's clamber up the Tor, I think it's time we had a little wander about the Abbey - or at lest what's left of it. 

The Abbey is owned by the Bath and Wells Diocesan Trust, which has clearly understood how you make maximum revenue to support your asset - you both enter and leave via the gift shop - but which also does an excellent job us using that revenue to maintain the asset. We like a good ruin, and have visited a good few ruined abbeys in our time. Coming from Yorkshire helps, of course, some of the finest abbey ruins in Europe can be found in that magnificent county. Our expectations are high.

On some scales the remains of Glastonbury Abbey are unimpressive. They lack the towering gothic majesty of North Yorkshire's  Fountains Abbey, or the intimate quirkiness of St. Dogmael's Abbey, set as they are in expansive - and largely empty - grounds. So yes, on some scales, not that impressive. Measured by other scales, however, it's a very striking place indeed. Heritage organisations like English Heritate and the National Trust could learn a thing or two from Glastonbury.

You exit the gift shop and are immediately reminded that this place was founded as a site of Christian worship. The little chapel dedicated to St. Patrick is the first thing that you pass, and is still a consecrated place of worship, with services held every week. The interior is beautiful, light, bright and airy, the walls adorned with simple mural depicting the saint driving the snakes out of Ireland. I regret that I took no photographs to show you, but a clearly devout young man was praying in the front pew, and out of deference to his devotions I left the camera in my pocket - after all, he had first call on the place. The chapel was founded in the year 1500 by the Abbot Richard Beere, and so has more than five hundred years of continuous use as a house of worship. We tourists are mere Johnny Come Lateleys, and as such should know our place.

To the rear of the chapel you will find the famed "Glastonbury Thorn".

Well, actually, you won't, because the original Glastonbury Thorn was felled and burned during the Civil War by the Puritans, who in their general and joyless fundamentalism regarded it as an object of unholy superstition and so added it to the long list of wonderful things destroyed by their shameful religious vandalism.

The tree that stands in the grounds of the abbey was propagated from that original tree, as was a second thorn that stands in the grounds of the Church of St John the Baptist on the high street.

The story goes that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury and while there thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill (just outside the town) where it grew into the miraculous Glastonbury Thorn. The story is unclear about why he might have done this. The tree was deemed special because it flowered not only in the spring, when one might expect blossom on a thorn tree, but also in the dead of midwinter when no other flower bloomed. This was regarded as a miracle - and as proof that the Cup of Christ had indeed been brought to these shores, for what else could bring life to the dead of winter?

Well, the thorn is in fact a variety of the Common Hawthorn called Crategus monogyna Biflora. A variety which does, in fact, flower twice a year. A more scientific explanation perhaps, but even I - a hardcore exponent of science - would concede that it lacks romance.

The discussion about whether Joseph of Arimathea actually did visit Glastonbury - with or without the Holy Grail - is ongoing. (Rather sweetly Wikipedia describes the issue as "controversial" - by which they mean that for some people it is an absolute article of faith while others regard the very idea as frankly ridiculous.) It's actually not impossible - there was trade between the middle east and the land that would become England at the time of Christ, so it could have happened. Could he have had anything to do with the Thorn, or, as many in medieval Glastonbury would have claimed, did he in fact found the Abbey itself and bring Christianity to these shores years before the Roman conquest?

Well, that seems doubtful, given that the first mention we have for the "miraculous" plant is in an early sixteenth century tome "the Lyfe of Joseph of Arimathea"*, and if he really had been involved in the arrival of the Thorn and founding of the Abbey you'd imagine that somebody might have mentioned it earlier...

Mind you, there might well be something in the idea that the thorn is special. Many people have tried growing new plants in recent years both from seed and from cuttings. Since the fifties however they constantly revert to being common or garden single flowering regular hawthorn bushes. Spooky, eh?

Moving on you come to the most intact area of the old abbey buildings, which can be entered via an impressively carved ornate archway which once upon a time led into the Lady Chapel.

I suppose in a sense it still does, except of course that the Lady Chapel now has no roof. Or floor. Or internal walls. That's sort of what it means to be a ruin, I suppose.


The building is twelfth century, constructed between 1184 and 1187 after a fire ravaged the abbey complex. It's famous for the ornate stone carving and, back in the day, would also have been extravagantly painted. As I said, these days it is lacking both a roof and a floor, but it's still impressive. In its prime it must have been absolutely mind-blowing.

We moved on, into what would have been the Nave - now essentially part of one exterior wall, and through a very impressive arch into a more well preserved area, with most of the exterior walls still standing . There was a little crowd of people surrounding a man in medieval finery, so we ambled over to see what was going on, and he turned out to be a sort of re-enactor/guide. (He did tell us which historical character he was but I confess I've forgotten.) We'd missed rather a lot of his spiel, but were still regaled by stories of the Abbey's long and occasionally bloody history.

We learned that the origins of the Abbey are most likely to be Saxon, with the base of the west end of the Nave possibly being built on the foundations of a stone church which, it is said** was built there in the seventh century by the Saxon King Ine of Wessex. That sort of suggests that Joseph of Arimathea may not have been involved... Anyway, we can be reasonably sure that the site was enlarged by St Dunstan (although he wasn't actually a saint at the time) in the tenth century, presumably in the 940s or 950s, given that by 960 he had left Glastonbury to become Archbishop of Canterbury.

About a hundred years later the Normans turned up and treated the Saxons of Glastonbury Abbey with the same amount of deference and respect they lavished on Saxons elsewhere in the kingdom - which is to say, none at all. They did do rather a lot for the Abbey's structure though. The Normans were famed architects and builders, and set about enlarging and aggrandising the Saxon buildings.

Let's just say they didn't skimp. By the time the Domesday Book came to record the Abbey's wealth in 1086 it was the richest and most magnificent monastic institution in the country. Not that the money helped a hundredish years later when, in 1184 the place burned down again. The monks were not overly perturbed however - it helps when your outlook is based on eternity, rather than the short of medium term, and of course although they'd lost many of their buildings they still had the cash which probably came in handy too - and set about rebuilding.

It was around this time that the monks set out to find the graves of King Arthur and his Queen Guinevere who, they thought, might be buried in the old Saxon cemetery. History is largely silent about why they thought that although as a cynic I tend to the view that the need to give paying pilgrims a new reason to pay the place a visit may have had something to do with it.

Whatever the motive, they duly dug up two skeletons which were entombed in great splendour. The fancy tomb didn't survive the ravages either of time or King Henry VIII's dissolution***, but the bodies are still buried in rather simpler graves in the Nave to this day:

By the time of the dissolution Glastonbury Abbey was second in power and influence only to the Abbey at Westminster. That still didn't help it when Henry VIII decided he didn't need the Pope's permission to get divorced (a decision that may have had something to do with the fact that the Pope had refused such permission), set up the Church of England with himself at the head (a position still held by the British Monarch) and plundered the considerable wealth of his kingdom's monasteries to fund his wars and pay for his banquets.****

The dissolution was particularly bloody for Glastonbury. The King's men came in September 1539 on the orders of Thomas Cromwell (long famed as one of history's great villains but given some smidgen of sympathy in Hillary Mantell's Booker winning "Wolfe Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies" - which for the record I heartily recommend, but I digress). They began to strip the Abbey of its not inconsiderable horde of silver and gold. The last Abbot, one Richard Whiting - who had sided with Henry over the split with Rome and therefore might reasonably have expected to be cut some slack - attempted to resist, but to no avail.

His attempt to preserve his Abbey failed and he died a traitor's death - hanged, drawn and quartered - at the top of Glastonbury Tor on November 15th 1539.

So ended the greatness of Glastonbury Abbey.

It's history between late 1539 and 1908, when it returned to the bosom of the church in the form of the Bath and Wells Diocesan Trust, is frankly rather depressing. It changed hands many times and seems to have been mostly owned by a long series of people who didn't really care about it as anything other than a quarry.

It's a pattern that repeats itself throughout history. There are after all, two ways of obtaining stone for a new building. You can find a decent lump of rock in the landscape, cut out big chunks, transport them to your building site and then cut those chunks to size, smooth them and dress them at great expense of effort, or you can just find a building nobody wants anymore and nick the already cut and dressed stones from there. Glastonbury Abbey is by no means unique in having suffered this fate. But if you were wondering what had happened to the walls that are no longer standing, the honest truth is that large parts of Glastonbury and it's surroundings are built out of them.

Recycling at it's most brutally efficient, perhaps.

This is, of course, why so little of the original fabric of the Abbey complex remains. And why it is all the more remarkable that the "Abbot's Kitchen" is so intact. It even retains its roof!

The refrectory, the long hall where the monks would have eaten their meals, survives only as foundations, as you can see from the picture to the left.


In the background of that picture however, you can see the bell shaped structure that housed the kitchen, and that is very much all there!

Well, alright. The roof is octagonal. I'm going to call it conical later
because this isn't a geometry class.

Without question the best preserved building to remain in the Abbey complex - in that it's the only building with all its walls, a roof and even actual, working doors - the octagonal stone structure has been described as "the best preserved medieval kitchen in Europe". Given that there are actually very few intact kitchens from this date (it was constructed in the mid fourteenth century at the behest of Abbot John de Breynton) it is perhaps #1 in a field of #1.5, but still...

Whatever it's status as "the best example of a thing", the Abbot's Kitchen is an impressive building. I have been unable to find any explanation as to why this particular building survived the dissolution and subsequent plundering of he Abbey complex for building materials, but survive it did.

It even found new uses, at least for a while. In the seventeenth century local Quakers adopted the structure and it became the "Friend's Meeting House" for a while, although the non-conformists were eventually forced out. I've not been able to find details regarding the hows and the whys, but it seems a shame. After all, the site was developed as a place of Christian worship. True, it was developed as a Catholic site, but the Quakers were at least putting it to the use it was originally intended for - and of course the people who forced them out wouldn't have been Catholic in any case...

Anyway. Somehow this one building did manage to resist the ravages of time and construction. Given that Christ taught that "the meek shall inherit the Earth" it does seem fitting that the only part of the complex to survive is not the extravagant ecclesiastical buildings with all their finery, but the kitchen - a simple place of work.

And it has to be said, it's pretty impressive. Somehow, the building looks bigger on the inside. I'm fairly sure there is no Galifreyan technology involved, but you never know...

The ceiling is high, rising to a point far, far above your head. The walls are whitewashed, and this amplifies the impression of space and light. A fireplace (or at least a collection of wood and charcoal artfully lit by read and orange lights to look like fire - the place burned down in 1184 don't forget, the Abbey has never forgotten that lesson...) occupies each corner, as it would have in the kitchen's prime. Smoke would have escaped through a hole in the ceiling immediately above the fire, and also through the top of the building's more or less conical roof.

The space is laid out exactly as they think it would have been when the kitchen was supplying the Abbot's Hall (the regular monks got their food from a much humbler kitchen - it would seem that, in monasteries at least, not all men were equal before God...) with a large table in the centre, and roasting spits over each fire. It is of course a static and somewhat sterile exhibit, lacking the heat, noise, smoke, dirt and smells that would have defined it during its working life, but even so it is fascinating to imagine what the lives of the cooks would have been like.

Stepping out of the kitchen into the uncharacteristically bright August sunshine we contemplated a stroll around the Abbey's rather extensive grounds. There are thirty six acres to explore, mostly parkland with a duck pond, a fish pond, a "wildlife area" and of course a cider orchard, because we're in Somerset and growing apples is essentially compulsory. 

However, it was heading for lunch o'clock, and neither of us fancied a walk, so we turned and headed back towards the building that housed the gift shop  - not because we fancied doing some shopping, but because the gift shop building also houses the excellent little museum which explains the history of the Abbey - and from which I gleaned much of the information presented in this post.

The museum isn't big, but does house a number of fascinating exhibits. For a start, there's a detailed (and huge) scale model of the Abbey complex as it may have looked at its height back in 1539. There is also a covered display case to house a single piece of parchment taken from a hand written (because that was the only way to produce these things back in the day...) copy of Pliny's "Historia Naturalis". The case is covered by a large felt flap, which protects this mid twelfth century artefact from the fading influence of the sun - and you may rest assured that this picture was taken without flash.

On its own of course, a singly page from an eight hundred year old book is of little use. But it is representative of the work which monks of the Abbey may well have produced. And it might only be one page - but it's an eight hundred year old hand written document. A tangible link between your twenty first century eyes and the twelfth century hand which held the pen and wrote these words.

Call me an old romantic if you like, but I find that remarkable.

You should probably go and have a look for yourself...

Join us next time - when we will visit another museum, but one considerably more up to date...

                                                                                       

*It was the 1500s, people didn't really do spelling...

**Although they might be wrong when they say it...

***A bit of ecclesiastical vandalism we can't blame on Cromwell and his cronies...

****Yes, I know there was more to it than that, but what do you expect? I write a caravan blog for goodness sake - if you want minute historical detail you need to be reading AJP Taylor!