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Glastonbury Tor
Re: Glastonbury Tor - The Egg Stone
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"It is possible that the central Omphalos of Glastonbury, utilised by the Normans for the crossing of the great church, was marked by a stone cross in Saxon times, possibly by a megalith or egg-stone in pagan times. This place may have been considered too holy to be covered by a building, perhaps earlier revered as a powerful pagan cult centre. In the 1912 excavations an egg-stone was discovered. Roughly egg-shaped, the huge boulder measured 3ft x 2ft x 1ft 4in. One side of the egg-stone was artificially flattened and bore a cavity, perhaps a socket for a cross-shaft. In Bligh Bond's writings he mentions an unnamed friend who remarked "...that such a cult-stone must necessarily have existed at any place bearing the name of Avalon". The stone was carved with small circular holes, parallel grooves, convergent grooves like star points, grooves with X-shaped intersections, chisel marks and "other incised marks of peculiar shape". Being found in the bank by the east alley of the cloister it was not far from the Omphalos, and it had obviously been shifted about. Possibly this stone originally marked the actual Omphalos, and subsequently, on christianisation, had a cross erected in a socket prepared for the purpose. Part of a cross which may have fitted into the Omphalos stone was found in the rubble core of the Norman walls of the nave. It bears fragments of an interlace pattern with the head of a Wyrm or dragon!"


Unless I'm missing something, Pennick is talking here about the, "megalithic or egg-stone" found in the Abbey and not the egg-stone that may have originate from a pre-Christian structure on the Tor?


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Littlestone
Posted by Littlestone
8th May 2005ce
00:50

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Re: Glastonbury Tor - The Egg Stone (baza)

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Re: Glastonbury Tor - The Egg Stone (baza)

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