urch claimed and received precedence as founded in Apostolic
times by Joseph of Arimathea. Those were not very critical days, so far as
historical evidence was concerned, and I should not have mentioned this
legend, or should only have mentioned it and passed on, but for a recent
illustration of a part of the story. The more we look into early local
legends, the more disinclined we become to say that there is nothing
substantial in them. The story has from early times gone, that the first
British Christians erected at Glastonbury a church made of twigs, of
wattle-work. This wattle church survived the violent changes which swept
over the face of the land. Indeed, it is said, and with so much of
probability that Mr. Freeman was willing to accept it as a fact, that
Glastonbury was the one place outside the fastnesses to which the British
Christians fled, where Christian worship was not interrupted when the
English came. This wattle church survived till after the Norman invasion,
when it was burned by accident[17]. Wattle-work is a very perishable
material; and of all things of the kind the least likely would seem to be,
that we, in this nineteenth century, should, in confirmation of the story,
discover at Glastonbury an almost endless amount of British wattle-work.
Yet that is exactly what has happened. In the low ground, now occupying
the place of the impenetrable marshes which gave the name of the Isle of
Avalon to the higher ground, the eye of a local antiquary had long marked
a mass of dome-shaped hillocks, some of them of very considerable
diameter, and about seventy in number, clustered together in what is now
a large field, a mile and a quarter from Glastonbury. The year before
last he began to dig. Peat had formed itself in the long course of time,
and its preservative qualities had kept safe for our eyes that which it
enclosed and covered. The hillocks proved to be the remains of British
houses burned with fire. They were set on ground made solid in the midst
of waters, with causeways for approach from the land. The faces of the
solid ground and the sides of the causeways are revetted with wattle-work.
There is wattle-work all over, strong and very well made. It clearly was
the main stand-by of the Britons, whose fortress this was, and their skill
in making it and applying it was great. The wattle when first uncovered is
as good to all appearance as the day it was made. The huts are oval and
circular, and some are of