Glastonbury Tor

51.1443°N, 2.6981°W.

Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, southwestern England — a natural conical hill 158 metres above the surrounding Somerset Levels, surmounted by the surviving stone tower of the medieval Church of St Michael (built ~1360 CE after a previous church on the site was destroyed in the 1275 earthquake). The hill itself is a natural geological feature — a sandstone-and-limestone cone capped by a harder Liassic rock layer that resisted erosion as the surrounding Levels subsided — but the visible terraces winding around its slopes have been variously interpreted as natural geological features, medieval agricultural terracing, or the remains of a deliberate Neolithic spiral processional path. Glastonbury has been associated since the medieval period with the legendary kingdom of Avalon, the burial of King Arthur, and the supposed visit of Joseph of Arimathea following the crucifixion of Jesus. The Glastonbury Abbey foundation in the seventh century CE was already exploiting these traditions for pilgrimage tourism.

A natural conical hill in southwestern England whose terraced slopes have been interpreted across a 6,000-year range, surmounted by a medieval church tower built to commemorate an even earlier Christian foundation.