Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset - ruins & Glastonbury Thorn - Photochrom postcard

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Glastonbury Abbey Ruins, the Glastonbury Thorn, Somerset
• Publisher:  Photochrom Co. Ltd.
• Postally used:  no - small amount of identification writing
• Stamp:  no
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Postage & Packing:

UK (incl. IOM, CI & BFPO): 99p

Europe: £1.60

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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The Glastonbury Thorn is a form of Common Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna 'Biflora'^[1] (sometimes incorrectly called Crataegus oxyacantha var. praecox), found in and around Glastonbury, Somerset, England. Unlike ordinary hawthorn trees, it flowers twice a year (hence the name ""biflora""), the first time in winter and the second time in spring. The trees in the Glastonbury area have been propagated by grafting since ancient times.^[1]

It is associated with legends about Joseph of Arimathea and the arrival of Christianity in Britain, and has appeared in written texts since the medieval period. A flowering sprig is sent to the British Monarch every Christmas. The original tree has been propagated several times, with one tree growing at Glastonbury Abbey and another in the churchyard of the Church of St John. The ""original"" Glastonbury Thorn was cut down and burned as a relic of superstition during the English Civil War, and one planted on Wearyall Hill in 1951 to replace it had its branches cut off in 2010.

According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea visited Glastonbury with the Holy Grail and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill, which then grew into the original thorn tree.^[2][3][4] Early writers do not connect Joseph to the arrival of Christianity in Britain, and the first literary source to place him in Britain appeared in the ninth century.^[5] The historicity of Joseph's presence in Glastonbury remains controversial, but the thorn is first mentioned in an early sixteenth-century metrical Lyfe of Joseph of Arimathea. The anonymous author notes that the thorn was unusual in that it flowered twice in a year, once as normal on ""old wood"" in spring, and once on ""new wood"" (the current season's matured new growth) in the winter. This flowering of the Glastonbury Thorn in mild weather just past midwinter was accounted miraculous.^[6]

At the time of the adoption of the revised Gregorian calendar in Britain in 1752, the Gentleman's Magazine reported that curious visitors went to see whether the Glastonbury Thorn kept to the Julian calendar or the new one:

Glastonbury.—A vast concourse of people attended the noted thorn on Christmas-day, new style; but, to their great disappointment, there was no appearance of its blowing, which made them watch it narrowly the 5th of January, the Christmas-day, old style, when it blowed as usual.

Gentleman's Magazine January 1753

The original Glastonbury Thorn itself was cut down and burned as a relic of superstition by Cromwellian troops (or 'Roundheads' by another source) during the English Civil War.^[2][7]

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: british

sub-theme=england

county/ country=somerset

number of items=single

period=inter-war (1918 - 1939)

postage condition=unposted