Here's an extract from a blog post I wrote earlier this summer, which can be viewed in full via the link at the bottom of this post:

As the media and music scenes converge on the Somerset Levels this month for the Glastonbury Music Festival, bringing with them legions of revellers that leave a trail of discarded wellies and broken tents in their wake, attention inevitably returns to the town’s connections with Arthurian Legend, and the quest for the Holy Grail.  Whilst there is something undeniably legendary about the way that the town has cultivated its mystical and spiritual status   for centuries, what is less than certain is whether it has any basis in fact.  What is more interesting is that a Twelfth Century Welsh historian may have conspired to create the Glastonbury myth, possibly to conceal the truth that St Joseph of Arimathea, who allegedly brought the Cup of Christ to the British Isles, may in fact have found his final resting place in Wales rather than England.

An early convert to the Jesus movement, Joseph of Arimathea is sometimes claimed to be Jesus’ uncle.  A rich merchant from the Judean Hills bordering Samaria, it was in his tomb that Jesus of Nazareth was interred following the Crucifixion.  It was Joseph of Arimathea who was said to have held the cup that collected the blood of Christ on the cross, a vessel also identified as the cup used during the Last Supper as recorded in the New Testament. The conventional narrative then has Joseph visiting Britain in the years after the Resurrection, tasked by Philip the Apostle with spreading the Gospel in the Northern provinces of the Roman Empire. Joseph is believed to have settled in the vicinity of Glastonbury, planted his staff on nearby Wearyall Hill, where it took root as the Holy Thorn that remains in the town to this day.  He is also believed to have founded the first Christianity community in the town, which grew to become Glastonbury Abbey.

The renowned scribe Gerald of Wales (the subject of a cartoon film narrated by Max Boyce, which itself achieved legendary status among Welsh schoolchildren of the late Eighties and early Nineties) wrote at the end of the Twelfth Century that he personally witnessed the discovery and exhumation of the remains of the legendary King Arthur and Queen Guinevere at Glastonbury Abbey. Much has been said about the convenience of the discovery following a fire at the Abbey that required expensive repairs. That announcement identified Glastonbury with the mythical Island of Avalon, named for the Welsh word afal (apple) and the area instantly became associated with the Arthurian quest for the Holy Grail, birthing a tourist tradition that has become a micro-industry all of its own.

Read in full here:

https://daniellyddon.wordpress.com/2022/06/20/is-joseph-of-arimathea-buried-in-south-wales/