related 1300 years of Glastonbury Abbey with Luke Loader and Mark Hutchinson 1/2 http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/98670 1300 years of Glastonbury Abbey with Luke Loader and Mark Hutchinson 2/2 http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/98765
In this special two-week programme we join Mark Hutchinson and Luke Loader from Glastonbury Abbeys education office to examine some of the places around Glastonbury where the Medieval Monastery and Abbey had influence. The Abbey and its work, both religious and secular, was abruptly extinguished in the sixteenth century dissolution of the monasteries, a power-grab by Henry VIII and his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Before the Dissolution of the Monasteries which historians generally agree brought the medieval period to an end, Abbeys like Glastonbury were dotted all over Britain and represented centres of learning, building, medicine, industry, agriculture and food production. In these two episodes, also available as one complete podcast, we start at Shapwick House, which, though now rebuilt, was the site of Abbot Whitings dramatic arrest by Thomas Cromwells soldiers in 1539. Here we also look at one of the biggest dovecotes in Britain, which dates from the same period, and which was used as a reserve of food much like rabbit warrens were also used in medieval times. We also take a look at the almoners house on Shapwick Manor, now part of Shapwick school. The almoners job was distributing the Abbeys money to the poor. http://www.shapwick-house.com https://www.shapwickschool.com https://www.glastonburyabbey.com
In part two we travel to nearby Westhay and the Avalon Marshes Centre where a Roman dining hall and Anglo-Saxon longhouse have just been reconstructed and the longhouse gives us a good idea of the sorts of buildings which would have been at the Glastonbury Christian site before the Norman invasion and subsequent construction of one of Englands finest abbeys there. Then we travel to Mere, also on the Somerset levels, to visit the Fish House which was constructed by and staffed from the Abbey to guard a series of fish ponds which the Abbot had also had built to supply fish for the abbeys monks and staff but also to sell to market as so much more of the produce of the abbey was. http://avalonmarshes.org/explore/avalon-marshes-centre/ https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/meare-fish-house/history/
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