359 
peat-bog the only season available for exploration is the dry 
summer and autumn. 
The Messrs. Bulleid having given the Field Club and numerous 
other visitors all the information in their power, for which they 
received the hearty thanks of the assembled company, a general 
return was made to Glastonbury, where Mr. Arthur Bulleid 
honoured the Field Club with his company at lunch in the old 
Pilgrim’s Hostelrie, built 1475 by Abbot Selwood, now “the 
George Hotel,” of which the facade was greatly admired, as well 
as that of the Tribunal, built by Abbot Beere as a court-house, 
1495. A few of the members of the Field Club, to whom the 
remains of the Abbey were well known set off for a walk to St. 
Michael’s Tower on the Tor, where the last Lord Abbot Whitinge, 
Nov. 15th, 1539, for no particular crime except concealing the 
Abbey treasures from Henry VIII.’s rapacious myrmidons, was 
hung, drawn and quartered, Bath being dishonoured by the gift 
of one of his quarters, as a warning not to follow that excellent 
man’s example in opposing the king’s prerogative. The greater 
number entered the ruins of the Abbey, viewed the exquisite 
architecture of the transitional chapel of St. Mary, erroneously 
styled St. Joseph’s chapel, by an ineradicable belief of the public 
in the truth of an old legend that St. Joseph of Arimathea built 
the first wattled chapel on this site, and was buried therein in a 
bifurcated shirt. The monks naturally fostered this craze, as it 
brought great wealth to the monastery, as did also the supposed 
possession of the body of St. Dunstan, whose bones certainly were 
at Canterbury, but the supposititious body wrought innumerable 
miracles, and true or false was a regular goldmine to the Abbey. 
Having thoroughly examined the ruins, and proceeded to the 
Abbot’s kitchen, a start was made for the station, where the 
saloon carriage placed by the Somerset and Dorset Railway 
Company at the service of the Field Club, was attached to the 
4 p.m. train, and brought the members back to Bath at 6.15 
after a most interesting excursion. 
