 Archaeological study dismisses abbey’s links to King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea, saying many stories were created to raise funds after a fire 
 
 
 
 
 
 A four year study by archaeologists has comprehensively demolished cherished myths about one of the most romantic religious sites in England, Glastonbury Abbey. He was wrong on all counts, Gilchrist says, his cemetery was really medieval, his royal grave was a pit with builders’ rubble from the 11th to 15th century, and new geophysical work on the foundations he found shows that the walls do not line up and so are almost certainly not a cloister at all. Those feet, immortalised in William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, never walked on the green and pleasant land of Glastonbury; the oldest church in England was not built there by Christ’s disciples; Joseph of Arimathea’s walking stick does not miraculously flower every Christmas after 2,000 years. And it turns out that the supposed link with King Arthur and his beautiful queen, Guinevere, is false too – invented by 12th-century monks faced with a financial crisis in the wake of a disastrous fire. Furthermore the team of 31 specialists, led by Roberta Gilchrist, professor of archaeology at the University of Reading, found that generations of her predecessors working at the abbey were so bewitched by the legends that they either suppressed or misinterpreted evidence that did not fit. “With the other legends there is a possibility of genuine belief or misunderstanding, but with Arthur and Guinevere I’m afraid there can be no question – the monks just made them up.” 
 
 
 
 In the 1950s and 60s Ralegh Radford, who was still working on his Glastonbury findings into his 90s, excavated and announced that he had rediscovered Arthur’s gravesite, along with the most ancient British Christian cemetery, and a Saxon cloister which was the oldest in England. “We are not in the business of destroying people’s beliefs,” Gilchrist, who is now a trustee of Glastonbury, said. However, new discoveries do suggest a previously unknown glassworks dating from as early as the seventh century, the earliest major glassworking site from Saxon England.
– A team of 31 specialists led by an archaeologist at the University of Reading are shedding light on some supposed Dark Age legends in their four-year work at Glastonbury Abbey in the UK, reports the Guardian. To wit: "Those feet, immortalized in William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, never walked on the green and pleasant land of Glastonbury; the oldest church in England was not built there by Christ’s disciples; Joseph of Arimathea’s walking stick does not miraculously flower every Christmas after 2,000 years," the paper notes. And that's not all. Even a famous link to King Arthur and his queen Guinevere is false—invented by the 12th-century monks who, after a destructive fire, needed to raise cash fast. The latter fabrication, perhaps the monks' most ingenious, came in the wake of a fire in 1184 that destroyed many buildings and artifacts that would attract visitors and money, reports Discovery. And so they claimed that King Arthur was buried in their midst. The archaeologists, however, found only a pit filled with rubble. “With the other legends there is a possibility of genuine belief or misunderstanding," says team leader Roberta Gilchrist. "But with Arthur and Guinevere I’m afraid there can be no question—the monks just made them up.” The one finding that may not crush the spirits of those who love the myths linked to one of England's most important monasteries is that the scientists unearthed glassworks they've been able to date to as early as the 600s, making it the area's earliest major glassworking site. And ceramic fragments dated even earlier suggest that wine was also imported at a very early date. (King Arthur may have been a Scot who lived in a swamp.)