Journal of Geomancy vol. 1 no. 1, October 1976
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Like many other abbeys and cathedrals, Glastonbury Abbey has several tunnel legends associated with it. These were investigated by F. Bligh Bond over sixty years ago, but little research has been carried out.
There are four tunnel legends attached to the abbey, three of which are partially verified.
The first legend is of a tunnel from the Pilgrims’ Inn (now the “George”) to a point within the abbey walls. As the Inn was built about 1470, in the time of Edward IV, by Abbot Selwood, the tunnel could have been used for secret access to the abbey by pilgrims staying at the inn. The tunnel, discovered by Bligh Bond, starts from the south of the cellar, under the High Street, and is clear for 20 feet southward until about the centre of the road where it is then blocked by a brick sewer. It is assumed that it then continues to the Abbot’s Gateway, where there was a porter’s lodge, but this again has not been verified. Mrs. Bilbrough in her diary on May 21, 1918, and quoted in Mr. Alan Fea’s “Rooms of Mystery and Romance,” described a trip into this tunnel:– “Off we started on our underground journey down a flight of fearfully steep steps, dark and damp and slippery … We groped our way to where the far-famed passage was, which had a great stone step at the entrance, and was only three feet in height, so that those who used it must have crawled on their knees, resting at intervals where ledges are cut in the sides for that purpose. Fancy going for a quarter of a mile like that, when even a few feet of it made my back ache and my limbs quiver all over from the unnatural strained position.”
Another legend which is widely believed is of a tunnel leading from the crypt of the Lady Chapel or Galilee, under the River Brue, to a distant point, possibly to the village of Street, where a passage exists from an outlying building in the grounds of the Old Manor House. A dog is said.to have been put into the tunnel at Street and found his way out at the Glastonbury end. The story of the tunnel passing under the River Brue is similar to that of the tunnel which is alleged to connect King’s College Chapel to Grantchester Manor, Cambridge, which would have to pass under the river Cam. Alfred Watkins in his book “The Old Straight Track” refers to such legends and states that they might be connected with leys. Michael Behrend in “The Landscape Geometry of Southern Britain” (Occasional paper No. 1 p. 4), has shown that the Kings to Grantchester Manor tunnel is a ley.
A passage does exist from the Street Manor grounds but cannot be explored fully because of an obstruction some distance from its entrance. It is thought to begin in the house and lead to the stables.
Bligh Bond excavated the reputed site of this tunnel near the Galilee and found the subsoil to be marshy and so unsuitable for a tunnel to have existed there. A large relieving arch was revealed but this was found to have been put there to carry the walls of the Galilee over a bad piece of ground.
An old inmate of the Woman’s Almhouse remembered seeing in her childhood a passage running from the well-chamber on the south side of the chapel. This tunnel had to be sealed up by the owner of the abbey as a lamb fell down the hole in the ground and was lost. Bligh Bond decided to cut a trench around the outside of this chamber, starting from the south wall of the chapel and curving round to the east at a radius of 20 to 30 feet. {22}
This trench, which was 8–10 feet deep, passed through to the monks’ graveyard to a point nearly due south of the well chamber, roughly opposite to a bit of freestone wall bounding the space by the wall. The rubble at this point gave way to reveal a filling of clay occupying a trench with vertical sides which suggest that a tunnel did once exist here.
This passage may have run south across the graveyard towards the guest hall and almonry and would have been connected with the service of the crypt. This would have made a covered way from the monastic buildings to the crypt of the Lady Chapel so enabling the monks to gain access to the shrines either undetected by the pilgrims, or, sheltered from the weather.
The third story is of a large underground passage in the field to the south of the Abbey. There had been a subsidence in one place and the stone head of a channel had been noticed. An old workman named Thyer remembered having seen a deep walled passage with flagstones opened by Mr. Austin, who owned the chapel then, but when Bligh Bond tried to locate the passage Thyer was unable to give the exact position of it.
However, another passage was said to have existed south of the Abbots Kitchen. This was a stone-built channel which crossed the orchard to a point in the western boundary.
As a search was being made for the footings of the Abbot’s House was found to be the main drain of the Abbey. One of Bligh Bond’s students entered this passage and climbed up it for some 60 feet.
It ran in a south-westerly direction to the lowest point of Magdalene Street where there was once a chain bridge and probably a water gate to the Abbey for the entrance of barges. The Abbey in those days was reliant upon the canals for its communication with the outside world, and the canals were very active with the Abbot’s barges.
The fourth and last legend is of a tunnel from the Abbey to the Tor or to the church of St. Michael, formerly upon the Tor, and interconnecting with a series of tunnels beneath the Tor. Another is believed to exist near the waterworks reservoir in Wellhouse Lane. Although this legend is very widely rumoured it has yet to be verified.