The Gate of Remembrance: The Story of the Psychological Experiment which Resulted in the Discovery of the Edgar Chapel at GlastonburyBond, Frederick Bligh
Religion
The Gate of Remembrance: The Story of the Psychological Experiment which Resulted in the Discovery of the Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury
Bond, Frederick Bligh
Glastonbury Abbey -- Miscellanea; Parapsychology and archaeology -- England -- Glastonbury -- Case studies; Spirit writings
Two years later, in the collection of Colonel Wm. Long, J.P., of
Clevedon, an eighteenth-century manuscript plan of the ruins, hitherto
quite unknown, came to light, and was found to show the two inclined
wall-sections of the apse of the Edgar Chapel. A note attached to this
plan gives the extreme dimensions of the chapel as 87 feet by 49 feet.
The latter would only be correct if it included the little chantry
projecting on the south side. It would not represent the true outside
measure of the chapel proper, which is elsewhere stated as 34 feet, and
must have approximated to that width.
Eighty-seven feet is of course fairly correct as an internal measure of
length, and thus substantiates the record.
SITTING XXXIX.--_Continued._
"AWFWOLD ye Saxon hath tried, but hee knows not ye tongue. He hath
somewhat of olden tyme that ye have found in ye este. He sayth hee
hadde a house or housen in wattlework and a churche within the forte,
ye which wee did enter when wee made Edgar hys newe chappell. Soe he
sayth. And that wych is beyond the chappell, is not there a chambre,
the wyche ye shall see when ye have digged full deepe. And from hym
did go a passage way to the Lodge over the gate that leadeth to
Chalice. Hyt is gonne full syne, wee wot. Wyth hym--the chambre--ye
church was six hundred and twenty-eight feete in length inside and
sixteene more outside walls, soe wee remember."
[Illustration:]
The blackened wattlework was found at a great depth in the clay
near the south-east corner of the Edgar Chapel. It was examined
together with other remains, and reported on by Mr. St. George Gray
in the _Proceedings of the Somerset Archæological Society_ for 1909.
No attempt has been made to explore the site beyond the eastward
limit of the Chapel. The ground is very deep, and there are other
difficulties. As the proved internal length of the Abbey with the
Chapel is 580 feet, this measure of 628 feet would imply another
large addition, and in the absence of any sort of evidence of its
probability, it is impossible to attach the least weight to it.
"The tombe of Arthur in shining blacke stone was in front of ye
altare. Ye can see hys size even now, an ye wis, in ye claye, and
certain fragmentes that yet are for hym to seeke. Blacke and scarlet
and golde was ye choire, save where they didde paint ye leaves in
greene, and somme tyme browne where ye clausteres were. Ye windowe was
much clere glasse wyth colours in ye midst under golden canopyes in
ye heades of the pannels. There was under ye alare (_sic_) a chambre
ye wyche ye did enter from the rear, but hee was low and smalle, and
there were many buried in hym. The pathe for processions wasne needed,
and soe they went not behind ye altare where ye chappells were nor
behind ye greate screene under ye este windowe. The churche he was soe
grete there was room enow in ye aisles and soe across ye altare in
front of hym by Arthur's tombe."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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