Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset, England, is the legendary resting place of King Arthur and Guinevere, and for centuries people have visited to see the grave of the mythical fifth-century King of the Britons and his bride. But the reality behind the abbey's claim to fame had little to do with early monarchy. It was mostly about economics.

Archaeology magazine's Jason Urbanus reports on new findings from University of Reading archaeologist Roberta Gilchrist, who heads up the Glastonbury Archaeological Archive Project, an intensive reexamination of 75 years' worth of excavations and discoveries from Glastonbury Abbey, many of which have been stored for decades without any scientific analysis. Gilchrist and her colleagues have found evidence that occupation of the Glastonbury site may indeed date back to the purported year of Arthur's reign in the fifth century, but not due to any mystical connection with the king.

We know for certain that Glastonbury was a thriving community in the seventh century, where Saxon villagers created large furnaces to melt down and recycle Roman glass. Gilchrist's project has confirmed that the glassworks predated the abbey, possibly by centuries, and was one of the largest glass production facilities in England at the time.

The richest abbey in England

In the early eighth century, King Ine of Wessex offered an endowment to a burgeoning abbey on the site. Thus began the rise of what ultimately became the wealthiest monastery in England. Towering atop a picturesque hill, the abbey grew famous for its beauty and its lucrative glassworks, drawing pilgrims and visitors from all over England and beyond.

Indeed, the abbey was already famous abroad when the Norman Conquest brought England under French control in 1066. The Norman invaders happily claimed the abbey as their own, adding sumptuous new buildings and enriching it further. The monastery continued to grow and thrive for over a century when tragedy struck. A massive fire in 1184 destroyed nearly all the buildings and treasures that the monks had amassed, converting a famous attraction into a smoking ruin overnight.

As they struggled to get funds to rebuild, the monks needed something to make the abbey seem significant again. It was now competing with Westminster Abbey, which had been established in 1065 and whose soaring architecture was already a marvel. But there was one thing Glastonbury could have that Westminster didn't. In the 1190s, Glastonbury monks let it be known that they had discovered the skeletons of King Arthur and Guinevere in a tree trunk, buried deep underground; they relocated the grave onto the grounds of the Abbey's new church.

Myth into money

It was a savvy move. A few decades before, Geoffrey of Monmouth had popularized the legends of Britain's early king by penning a document called History of the Kings of Britain. Geoffrey claimed he'd translated it from Welsh; it recorded two thousand years of British history, including most famously a chapter called "The Prophesies of Merlin," which introduced the tales of Arthur, Guinevere, the wizard Merlin, and the magical sword Excalibur. At the time, people thought the history was a genuine translation, though modern scholars believe Geoffrey just made it up—perhaps inspired by stories he'd heard as a boy from his father, who was also named Arthur.

With England going crazy for Geoffrey's tales of Arthur, it was a perfect time for the monks to claim a part of that history. Glastonbury was an ancient site—indeed, even Gilchrist confirms that it originated in the fifth century, when Arthur allegedly lived. People bought the idea, and Arthur's grave soon became a lucrative attraction.

As late as the 1950s, archaeologist Ralegh Radford believed that Arthur had been buried there. But Gilchrist told Urbanus that "Radford may have exaggerated his evidence. Reassessment of his excavation records shows that this was merely a pit in a cemetery, dating to sometime between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries.”

Urbanus continues:

Analysis of the twelfth-century abbey church indicates that the monks themselves purposefully promoted the site’s historic reputation. As they rebuilt the church after the great fire in 1184, instead of using contemporary architectural styles, they inserted antiquated and retrospective elements, apparently to deliberately feign antiquity.

Glastonbury was never again the wealthiest abbey in England, but it remained a close second after Westminster. The legends of Arthur helped bring the ancient site back into the public eye, and it was a popular attraction well into the sixteenth century when Henry VIII shut England's Catholic monasteries down. The king ordered Glastonbury's abbot drawn and quartered, and the site was abandoned.

With the help of archaeologists like Gilchrist, however, we are coming to understand that Glastonbury's significance is far more complicated than we ever imagined. It was a community that thrived on its craft production of glass and then later on its reinvention as part of the Arthurian legend. You might say that Glastonbury's twelfth-century monks were very modern indeed. They cashed in on the abbey's long history, using it to turn myth into money.