Puddletown & Sherborne Abbey in Dorset. Puddletown is a village in Dorset, England, 5 miles east of Dorchester in the River Piddle valley. The River Piddle or Trent or North River is a small rural Dorset river which rises next to Alton Pancras church (Alton Pancras was originally named Awultune, a Saxon name meaning the village at the source of a river) and flows south and then south-easterly more or less parallel with its bigger neighbour, the River Frome which rises in the Dorset Downs at Evershot and passes through Maided Newton, Dorchester, West Stafford, Woodsford, to Wareham, where they both enter Poole Harbour via Wareham Channel. East of Dorchester the river runs through unresistant sands, clays and gravels, which would have originally been capped by chalk which is still extant in the Dorset Downs to the north and Purbeck Hills to the south.
The valley has wide flood plains and marshes and gave the name to the Durotriges, water dwellers, the Celtic tribe of Dorset. The river forms a wide, shallow ria at its estuary, Poole Harbour. Prior to the end of the last ice age the Purbeck Hills were continuous with the Isle of Wight and the Frome would have continued east through what is now Poole Harbour and Poole Bay, into The Solent, collecting the Stour, Beaulieu, Test and Itchen, before flowing into the Channel east of what is now the Isle of Wight.
The Avalon Peninsula is a large peninsula that makes up the southeast portion of the island of Newfoundland.
The Danes made frequent raids up the river. The town walls at Wareham were built in 876AD, possibly by Alfred the Great, to defend the town against this threat. The older streets in the town Wareham in Dorset follow a Roman grid pattern, though the current town was founded by the Saxons. The town's oldest features are the town Walls, ancient earth ramparts surrounding the town, which were built by Alfred the Great in the 9th century to defend the town from Norsemen. The town was a Saxon royal buriel place, notably that of King Beorhtric (800 CE); also in the town is the coffin of Edward the Martyr, dating from 978, his remains now to be found in Shaftesbury Abbey in north Dorset. The River Frome serves as a small harbour and the town was a port in centuries when boats were smaller and before the river silted up. Although Shaftesbury's recorded history dates from Anglo-Saxon times, it may have been the Celtic Caer Palladur. Its first written record as a town is in the Burgal Hidage. Alfred the Great founded a Burgh (fortified settlement) here in 880.
Alfred and his daughter Ethelgiva founded Shaftesbury Abbey in 888, which was a spur to the growing importance of the town. Athelstan founded three royal mints, which struck pennies bearing the town's name, and the abbey became the wealthiest Benedictine nunnery in England. On February 20th 981 the relics of St Edward the Martyr were translated from Wareham and received with great ceremony, thereafter turning Shaftesbury into a major site of pilgrimage for miracles of healing. In 1240 Cardinal Otto, legate to the Apostolic See of Pope Gregory IX visited the abbey and confirmed a charter of 1191, the first entered in the Glastonbury chartulary.
King Canute died here in 1035. In the Domesday Book, the town was known as Scaepterbyrg; its ownership was equally shared between King and Abbey. The Abbey was in the middle ages the central focus of the town. The shrine of St Edward, who is interred here, attracted pilgrims from afar. In 1260, a charter to hold a market was granted. In 1392, Richard II confirmed a grant of two markets on different days. By 1340, the mayor had become a recognised figure, sworn in by the Steward of the Abbess. By the time of the Reformation the Abbey had become exceedingly wealthy. It was said at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries that "if the Abbess of Shaftesbury and the Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey had been able to wed, their son would have been richer than the King of England" such were the lands that had been bequethed.
Glastonbury Abbey in Glastonbury, Somerset, England, now presents itself as "traditionally the oldest above-ground Christian church in the world" situated "in the mystical land of Avalon" by dating the founding of the community of monks at A.D. 63, the legendary visit of Joseph of Arimathea, who was supposed to have brought the Holy Grail and planted the Glastonbury Thorn. A community of monks were already established at Glastonbury when King Ine of Wessex enriched their endowment. He is said to have directed that a stone church be built in 712, the foundations of which now form the west end of the nave. Glastonbury was ravaged by the Danes in the 9th century. The contemporary reformed soldier Saint Neot was sacristan at Glastonbury before he went to found his own establishment in Somerset. The abbey church was enlarged in the 10th century by the Abbot of Glastonbury, Saint Dunstan, the central figure in the 10th-century revival of English monastery life, who instituted the Benedictine Rule; Dunstan became Archbishop of Canterbury in 960. Dunstan built new cloisters as well.
In 967, King Edmund was laid to rest at Glastonbury. In 1016, Edmund Ironsides who had retired to the west country as "king of Wessex" was buried there too. The new Norman abbot Turstin added to the church, unusually building to the east of the older Saxon church and away from the ancient cemetery, thus shifting the sanctified site. Not all the new Normans were suitable heads of religious communities. In 1077 Thurstin was dismissed after his armed retainers killed monks right by the High Altar. In 1086, when the census reported in Domesday Book was commissioned, Glastonbury Abbey was the richest monastery in the country. Abbot Henry of Blois commissioned a history of Glastonbury, ca 1125, from the chronicler William of Malmesbury, whose De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae is our source for the early recorded history, and much awe-inspiring legend as well.
In 1184 a great fire at Glastonbury destroyed monastic buildings. There is evidence that in the 12th century the ruined nave was renovated enough for services while the great new church was being constructed. If pilgrim visits had fallen, the discovery of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's tombs in the cemetery in 1191 provided fresh spurs for visiting Glastonbury. According to the chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis, the abbot Henry de Blois commissioned a search, discovering at the depth of 16 feet a massive oak trunk containing two skeletons. Nearby, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, was a leaden cross with the unmistakably specific inscription Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia ("Here lies interred the famous King Arthur on the Isle of Avalon"). King Edward I and Queen Eleanor attended the magnificent service at the reburial of King Arthur's remains at the foot of the High Altar. Services in the reconsecrated Great Church had begun on Christmas Day, 1213, most likely before it was entirely completed. In 1215, among the great bishops and magnates signing Magna Carta, was Jocelyn, Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury.