Qualla: Glastonbury Thorn

Glastonbury Thorn: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Grainger, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every December, an elderly pupil from St John's Infants School climbs onto a stool in a Glastonbury churchyard and snips a sprig of blossom from a hawthorn tree. The cutting is wrapped, boxed, and posted to Buckingham Palace, where it sits on the King's Christmas dinner table. This is not folklore preserved in a guidebook - it actually happens, every year. The tree the children visit is a Glastonbury Thorn, a hawthorn that flowers twice annually instead of once, and according to legend it grew from the walking staff of Joseph of Arimathea after he thrust it into Wearyall Hill nearly two thousand years ago.

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Image: Ken Grainger | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glastonbury Thorn: A Staff That Took Root

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Karl Gruber, CC BY 3.0 at. The story is the kind of medieval origin tale that sounds embellished because it almost certainly was. Joseph of Arimathea, the man who provided Christ's tomb in the Gospels, supposedly sailed to Britain bearing the Holy Grail. Weary from his journey, he climbed the hill above wh...

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Image: Karl Gruber | CC BY 3.0 at

Glastonbury Thorn: Burned as a Relic

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit mym, CC BY-SA 2.0. The original tree on Wearyall Hill became a centre of pilgrimage through the Middle Ages, surviving the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey in 1539. Even after the abbey was demolished and its stones carted off to build local houses, the Thorn kept flowering at Christmas, and Englis...

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Image: mym | CC BY-SA 2.0

Glastonbury Thorn: December 2010

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NotFromUtrecht, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 9 December 2010, someone climbed Wearyall Hill in the dark and sawed every branch off the replacement Thorn that had been planted there in 1951 to mark the Festival of Britain. The vandalism shocked the town. New shoots appeared in spring 2011, but they kept being cut down wit...

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Image: NotFromUtrecht | CC BY-SA 3.0

Glastonbury Thorn: The Living Trees

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rbe2057, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Thorn is not extinct. Grafted descendants flourish in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey, in the churchyard of St John the Baptist on the High Street, and at the Chalice Well. The tree the schoolchildren visit each December is one of these - a survivor lineage stretching back t...

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Image: Rbe2057 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Glastonbury Thorn: Two Bloomings

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rosser1954, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk through St John's churchyard on Glastonbury High Street in mid-December and look for a hawthorn covered in small white flowers. There is no other plant in England that does this. The trick is genetic - a mutation in a single hawthorn that someone, at some point, recognised w...

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Image: Rosser1954 | CC BY-SA 4.0