History of Glastonbury Abbey

ut later it was used for delivering produce, including grain, wine and fish, from the abbey's outlying properties. Much of the stone came from the abbey's own quarries at Doulting, allowing access by way of the River Sheppey at Pilton. From the 11th century onwards Glastonbury Abbey became the centre of a large water-borne transport network as further canalisations and new channels were made in the region, including the diversion of the Brue to afford access to the important estate at Meare and an easier route to the Bristol Channel. In the 13th century the abbey's head boatman is recorded as using the waterways to take the abbot in an eight-oared boat on visits to the abbey's manors in the area.

Medieval era

Norman conquest

At the Norman Conquest in 1066, the wealth of Glastonbury made it a prime prize. The new Norman abbot, Turstin, added to the church, unusually building to the east of the older Saxon church and away from the ancient cemetery, thus shifting the sanctified site. This was later changed by Herlewin the next abbot, who built a larger church. Not all the new Normans were suitable heads of religious communities. In 1077, Thurstin was dismissed after his armed retainers killed monks by the High Altar. In 1086, when Domesday Book was commissioned, Glastonbury Abbey was the richest monastery in the country. Abbot Henry of Blois commissioned a history of Glastonbury, about 1125, from the chronicler William of Malmesbury, whose De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae is our source for the early recorded history, and much of the legend as well.

Early drainage work on the Somerset Levels was carried out in the later years of the 12th century, with the responsibility for maintaining