Welcome to the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society

Please position your curser over images to see their descriptions

Recent additions:                                                                                                                 

27/05/08   Civic Buildings page added under 'Properties'

25/05/08  Download page added

21/05/08   Lake Village page amended with PDFs for Children's visits

21/05/08   Artists Witnesses & Plans page added to  

21/05/08   Directories page added to

30/03/08  Town Trail page added with PDF download 

 

The Society was founded in 1886 on the initiative of J G L Bulleid, who was then the Mayor,

“… its primary object being the support and establishment of a Museum at Glastonbury as a repository for specimens and books relating to and connected with art, archaeology, and natural history, with especial reference to Glastonbury and its immediate neighbourhood, …”

The Borough Council agreed to allow the Society to enclose the market area under the Town Hall to house the Society's Museum which opened in the following year.

The role of the Society expanded after the founder’s son, Arthur Bulleid, discovered the Iron Age Glastonbury Lake Village on the Godney Road in 1892. The site was given to the Society and eleven years of excavation and fund-raising with further years of study led to the final publications of 1911 and 1917.

Following its Victorian and Edwardian heyday between the wars the Society was comparatively inactive until more recently the Society has concentrated on three areas of work:  

1.  the development of its antiquarian library, now housed in the Archers Way Public Library;

2.  the display of its collection of artefacts, now housed in the Tribunal; and

3.  a programme of lectures and field trips.