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30 minutes from Camerton you will find the remains of the 14th-century St
Michael's Chapel, the tower stands like a lone sentinel on the top of
Glastonbury Tor, yet people travel from all over the world to make private
pilgrimages to this legendary spot where King Arthur is said to have come to
die.
In Arthurian legend, the King was mortally wounded by his nephew Modred at
the Battle of Camlann and carried by weeping maidens on a barge to the Isle of
Avalon. What happened after that is not recorded, but many people believe that
Glastonbury Tor is the Isle of Avalon.
During the Dark Ages, when Arthur lived, most of Somerset was marshland and
sheets of water cut off the Tor during floods and very high tides. In fact, the
pagan Celts called it 'Ynys-witrin' – 'the Island of Glass', and regarded it as
a sacred site, as they did all islands.
It is easy to imagine a wounded King landing on Glastonbury Tor, and this belief
was bolstered in the 12th-century when the monks of St Michael's Chapel
discovered the bones of a tall man and a woman with yellow hair. It was claimed
that a lead cross was also found in the grave, inscribed 'Here in the Isle of
Avalon the famous King Arthur lies buried.' Of course, it might have been a
genuine find, but scholars agree that it comes from a later time than Arthur's
although it was apparently too old to be a 12th-century fake.
Sir Thomas Malory, who was one of the many medieval writers to be fascinated by
the story of King Arthur wrote his own romantic version that had a different
inscription for Arthur's grave. According to him, it reads 'Here lies Arthur,
the Once and Future King' - the King who will rise again whenever he is needed.
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