Qualla: The Tribunal, Glastonbury

The Tribunal, Glastonbury: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Linda Bailey, CC BY-SA 2.0. The building looks like a courthouse. It is called the Tribunal. People have assumed, since at least 1791, that this was where Glastonbury Abbey held its assizes - where secular justice was dispensed for the Twelve Hides of Glaston, where Judge Jeffreys may have presided over the Bloody Assizes after the Monmouth Rebellion. The trouble is, there is no evidence for any of it. A stone house on Glastonbury High Street has gone for over two centuries by a name that was probably someone's guess.

Image: Linda Bailey | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Tribunal, Glastonbury: What the Stone Knows

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NotFromUtrecht, CC BY-SA 3.0. The building's actual past is more modest and more interesting. A timber structure stood on this spot in the 12th century. The current stone house was built in the 15th, almost certainly as a merchant's house, with a fashionable new facade added in the 16th century when the kitch...

Image: NotFromUtrecht | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Tribunal, Glastonbury: The Lake Village Inside

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 4.0. What lives inside the building now has nothing to do with merchants or courts. The Tribunal houses the Glastonbury Lake Village Museum, run by the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society - one of the oldest archaeological societies in England - and curated from objects pulled out of the ...

Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Tribunal, Glastonbury: The Glastonbury Bowl

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most famous object in the collection is the Glastonbury Bowl, a small bronze vessel pieced together from two separately cast halves. The lower half is Iron Age. The upper half was added in the first century AD, probably cut from a sheet of metal that had been something else f...

Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Tribunal, Glastonbury: A Court That Never Was

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 4.0. English Heritage owns the building now and Glastonbury Town Council runs the museum, with proceeds flowing back into the town. The Bloody Assizes connection - Judge Jeffreys, the brutal aftermath of the failed 1685 Monmouth Rebellion, hundreds of men sentenced to death and transp...

Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Tribunal, Glastonbury: Visiting

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Tribunal stands on the High Street, a few minutes' walk from the abbey ruins, and serves as Glastonbury's tourist information centre as well as its museum. The Glastonbury Antiquarian Society, founded in 1886 by Arthur Bulleid's father, still curates the exhibits. Walk throug...

Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 4.0