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Excavation at Beckery, Glastonbury.
November 15, 2017 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
The talk will be given by Richard Brunning, of the South West Heritage Trust, who was the site director at the excavations at Beckery, which is near Glastonbury in Somerset. The dig re-investigated the site of a medieval chapel which was first excavated in the 1880s by John Morland and again in the 1960s by Philip Rahtz and has produced the earliest known evidence for monasticism in the British Isles. Radiocarbon dating of bodies in the monastic cemetery has shown that the monastery began in the 5th or early 6th centuries AD, before Somerset was conquered by the Saxon kings of Wessex in the 7th century. The ancient origins of the Beckery site may explain why later medieval writers linked it to figures such as King Arthur and Saint Brigit.