If you want history, legend, mystery, a feeling of "other-worldness", then go to Somerset to the ancient settlement of Glastonbury and there you will find it all. It is a place full of legends, a place of pilgrimage for Christians and for the followers of the New Age philosophy. The early settlement was not the green, grassy place we see today. At the time of Christ the sea came up to the lower slopes of the Tor and by the third century it had been replaced by a lake. Today this is the area of the Somerset Levels controlled by a system of drains (water courses whose levels are controlled.) Two thousand years ago it was a marshy, waterlogged area with small villages built on islands, very much in the style of the crannogs of Scotland and Ireland. The pyramid shaped Tor and its satellite hills which overlook the present town have probably changed very little. One of these hills - Wearyall- features in one of the legends of Glastonbury, that of the Holy Thorn. The story is that Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff into the ground and it took toot. From this sprang a thorn tree that flowered twice a year, at Christmastime and in the early spring.

Of all the followers of Jesus Christ perhaps Joseph of Arimathea was the most unlikely. From the Bible we discover that he was wealthy and pious and a member of the Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin. Considering that the council members were Jesus’ mortal enemies, Joseph’s allegiance was unusual to say the least.. During the lifetime of Jesus, Joseph understandably, to coin a modern phrase, maintained a low profile. After the Crucifixion, with the Sabbath fast approaching and time being precious, Joseph went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus. It was granted to him and he and Nicodemus prepared it for burial with the usual Jewish rites. The stone tomb was very likely one that Joseph had had built for himself. There would certainly not have been time to search any distance for a tomb before the beginning of the Sabbath.

After this he slips out of history and into legend. One version is that he had visited England previously in his capacity as a merchant travelling with Phoenicians in their search for tin.. Another that he was a relative of Mary and on one journey he had brought with him the young Jesus of Nazareth. It has been suggested that this story was the inspiration for William Blake’s "And did those feet in ancient times...." Yet another version is that, having left Jerusalem, he joined Philip the Apostle in Gaul and was sent by him to England with twelve disciples. They were received by the king who gave them the island of Yniswitrin which was later called Glastonbury. Here they built a wattle church, the forerunner of Glastonbury Abbey. The simple wattle church was built where the abbey’s Lady Chapel later stood. It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and around 500 AD, Glastonbury had become the first home of the cult of the Virgin in England. The Holy Grail became Mary’s emblem and another of the Glastonbury legends is that Joseph brought it with him after the crucifixion. The Grail was believed to have been the cup used by Jesus at the last supper or that it held his blood collected at the Crucifixion.

The little wattle chapel grew into the largest and richest abbey in England. As with most religious foundations it had its ups and downs. St. Patrick visited it and its most famous abbot was St. Dunstan (940-56) who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. In the sixteenth century Glastonbury was in dispute with Canterbury about the possession of St. Dunstan’s relics and each claimed to be the oldest foundation. It was at this time of crisis that the Joseph legends seemed to have appeared. His cult was developed by Abbot Beere who inserted a crypt into the Lady Chapel and established a shrine dedicated to St. Joseph. Also about this time, Glastonbury’s other famous legends were flowering: those of King Arthur, whose grave had supposedly been discovered a few centuries earlier. The legends of Joseph were, and are, passionately believed to be true. However, it has to be said that William of Malmesbury and all the other early sources do not mention the Glastonbury Legend (as it was called). John of Glastonbury writing his "History" at the beginningof the 15th century includes Joseph, St. Patrick and Arthur but does not mention the Grail story in his version of the Legend .Joseph’s own grave was believed to have been in Glastonbury but was never found

In the story of the Holy Thorn, Joseph planted his staff on Wearyall Hill and here it blossomed and flourished. Down the ages pilgrims came and took away with them leaves and cuttings as souvenirs. Some of these cuttings were rooted around Glastonbury, outside the chapel of St. Patrick in the abbey and at the front of St. John’s church. The tree on the hill flourished with its double trunk and winter flowers until Elizabethan times, when it was attacked by a Protestant zealot with an axe. The story goes that he felled one part but while hacking at the second, the axe rebounded hitting him on the leg. A chip of wood flew in his eye blinding him. He then wisely left the tree alone! The tree survived until the Civil War.

Did Joseph of Arimathea come to Glastonbury and plant his staff on Wearyall Hill and did it take root there? He was wealthy and his wealth very possibly came from trade and, therefore, he would have had access to ships to take him across the seas to Britain. There was trade between the Phoenicians and Britain at this time. He would have had the incentive to leave Jerusalem once the news got about that he had given up his tomb to the Nazarene. His colleagues on the Sanhedrin would certainly have taken a very dim of view of that! Finally the thorn itself; it is not the common thorn of Britain which flowers only in the spring. The Glastonbury Thorn flowers in early January which is the time of the old Christmas Day. The fact that not many of the offsprings of the old tree survive indicates that it was not natural to these shores. There is a thorn - "Cratagus aronia" which grows in Asia, around Jerusalem and on the Mount of Olives - whose wood was often used for shepherds’ crooks and staffs. There were Christians among the Romano-British centuries before Columba and Augustine brought the word of God back to these shores. Who brought the good news to them? Joseph of Arimathea, perhaps?- it is certainly possible!