St Michaels Tower, Glastonbury
St Michaels Tower, Glastonbury
St Michael's Tower is the Grade I remnant of the medieval church of St Michael on the summit of Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, in the care of the National Trust.
- Location
- Glastonbury, Somerset
- Country
- England
- County
- Somerset
- City / town
- Glastonbury
- Address
- Glastonbury Tor, Glastonbury, Somerset, BA6 8BG
- Postcode
- BA6 8BG
- Built
- C12 church destroyed 1275; tower rebuilt first half of C14; restored 1804
- Denomination
- National Trust
- Dedication
- Michael
- Grade
- I
- Style
- Perpendicular
- Materials
- Stone; unroofed three-storey tower with corner buttresses and battlements
- Grid reference
- ST 512 386
- Opening hours
- Open dawn to dusk everyday.
- Access
- Reached on foot by steep paths up Glastonbury Tor; no vehicular access to the summit.
Overview
Historic England lists only the tower, without its upper storey, from the medieval church. The listing describes late thirteenth-century work with Perpendicular additions, restored in 1804: three storeys, corner buttresses, string courses, Perpendicular bell-openings and battlements, a sculptured tablet of an eagle below the parapet, seven canopied niches on the west face, Y-tracery to the lower storey, and carved reliefs over a deeply moulded west door. It is a dominant feature of the Somerset landscape and a scheduled monument.
The scheduled-monument entry records twelfth-century foundations for a stone church that formed the focus of a monastic complex (a 1243 charter permits a fair at the monastery of St Michael on the Tor). That church was destroyed by an earthquake on 11 September 1275. Rebuilding began under Abbot Adam of Sodbury in the first half of the fourteenth century; the base of the standing tower dates from this campaign. The 1804 restoration entirely rebuilt the north-east corner. Niches on the west face include a statue of St Dunstan and the base of a statue of St Michael. Reliefs flanking the west doorway show an angel at the weighing of a soul and St Bridget milking a cow. The scar of the nave roof is visible on the east side; excavated foundations showed a rebuilt church about 25 metres long including the tower and 7.5 metres wide.