Glastonbury: what is its place in the future? by Palden Jenkins for Free State Magazine March 1999

Since moving to Glastonbury in 1980, I have long been amazed at the way the planning and governance of Glastonbury seems to have overlooked the town's obvious, historic core purpose. The town was built around its abbey, on this 'holiest Earthe', to service two main purposes: the practise of religion and knowledge, and the provision of facilities for pilgrimage. This hasn't really changed. During this century Glastonbury's purpose, clothed in new guises, has come to the fore again, amidst its unsuspecting, motley buildings and its apparently sleepy Somerset innocence.

Yet Glastonbury's raison d'être has been held back by denial and silence, both local and national, and also by the tiredly materialistic atmosphere of our country. During the Eighties, to many, Glastonbury became a joke, populated by dirty hippies and silly eccentrics who were apparently foolishly missing the point. However, the twentieth century is now becoming... history. Something else is brewing. A new century, and a fundamentally new world. Things are turning around.

I believe the 2000s will be Glastonbury's century. Partially as a result of its ancient heritage, partly because it has become a resource-centre for alternative ways now being surreptitiously taken on by mainstream society, and partly because of a future we cannot yet see.

Perhaps we need to start thinking longterm, working from a range of envisioned possibilities – and even (this is where hackles might rise!) thinking about the growth of a city, of a new kind. We need to visualise the decades ahead, and to cater for a likely growing tide of attention, immigration and visitation. Without forethought, we risk being swamped by such a tide, to some extent regardless of what we might prefer.

We might also gain a clearer sense of what to do if a boom hits this town – a boom encompassing all aspects of Glastonbury's rather numinous reality. Our human resources, whatever their weaknesses and faults, are strategic 'oil reserves' of the future. Our weaknesses and faults are part of this resource, because the wider world is likely to encounter hurdles too, discovering a need to learn how to overcome them.

In this information age, Glastonbury provides a microcosmic pool of experiential life-information and social-spiritual information of a very special kind. And this town's habitual drawbridge-mentality might be overwhelmed by very informative events. One such event could be the imminent Millennium period itself, only months away. I propose that we need to think some unthinkables and figure out some strategies.

In 1982 I experienced a surprise vision of Glastonbury's future. I kept quiet about it because it seemed too way-out, even for some of my friends. Yet this vision has not gone away. I saw Glastonbury in the 2080s. Whether this is fantastic or realistic, is difficult to tell. But if you don't like it, what do you see in its place?

The Somerset Levels were flooded, and Glastonbury was again a semi-island. It was now part of a city amongst trees, interspersed with waterscapes, stretching to Westhay, Somerton, Babcary, Pilton and Coxley. A city without pollution and congestion, and a mecca for the people of a new, changed world. Over Park Wood an enormous clear dome, as high as the Tor, enclosed its ancient oaks and an eco-park conserving species of former times. Islands and pools had been dug out in the flooded Levels, and the islands and the local hills formed the precincts of the new city.

It was cosmopolitan. It had quarters for American, North African, European and other refugees of sea-level changes and regional disturbances. Yes, mosques in Glastonbury! The Old Town marked the old centre, and Butleigh marked a new centre across the water. The city was both high- and low-tech, both impressive and simple. It had grown in response to necessity, through a series of crunches, miracles and enormous investments of energy.

The wave-like, magnificatory, growth-oriented, kaleidoscopic Glastonbury atmosphere was still there, yet the world had turned towards it and now counted it as important. Warts'n'all, Glastonbury had become a Twenty-First Century Silicon Valley without the silicon. It exported healing, education, research, ideas, energy-technologies and public events – a Geneva-like centre for global eco-human projects. It wasn't heaven – it was a new reality, facing new issues. Yet it was nevertheless Glastonbury, being itself.

Just a minute. Before you reject all this, consider the following. If you had described today's Glastonbury to a Glastonian of 1920 – describing housing estates on Windmill Hill and Wirral Park, Safeways on the Fairfield, school campuses for rich kids, a busy ring-road built on the railway, and Aussies and Germans on the High Street – they would legitimately have rejected you as a nutcase!

I saw a new temple alongside the Abbey. Stone Down, Chalice Hill and the Tor were a parkland, with glades, special environments and open spaces to provide visitors with balm for the soul. New tree-houses, pods and domes, floating kampongs and imaginative architectural piles now sat where once there had been the chemicalised beef-grazing fields of Mid-Somerset.

There was a certain geometry to it all. Windmill Hill was topped with... windmills. The main harbour was at the bottom of Butleigh road. The old industrial estate, part-flooded, now sported a university and healing hospital. An enormous conference centre nestled under Dundon Beacon. Worthy Farm was now a Wembley of a new kind. Yeovilton was a landing port for strange flying machines.

Whether or not one subscribes to such possibilities, and whether or not this describes an actual future scenario, it reveals one thing: a need to recognise a spectrum of possibilities embodying Glastonbury's core, longterm, manifest purpose and future. The future will not just be 'more of the same'.

People visit and move to Glastonbury seeking something, not just cream teas and crystals. We need to identify what they genuinely seek and serve those needs in the best possible way. People seek revelation, resolution, breakthrough and a new life. In the coming century, inner change will not be a personal, private, 'alternative' matter – it will be political, social, practical and mainstream. Glastonbury stands centrally in this.

Today, spotlights are already turning our way. People already come in ever-increasing numbers. Catering for future expansion involves investment, skill, experience and energy. It involves brave choices and a sense of civic, social, collective purpose. And thoughtful, pragmatic solutions.

Of course, these ideas will upset some people. Some Glastonians believe our town is nothing special, nowhere special. Some resent 'blow-ins' with their ambitious, disruptive ideas. And there are incomers who resent other incomers following after them. Yet, in Glastonbury's long history, good Saxon Zummerzet folk themselves were once incomers. This town was created by Palestinians, Germans, Irish and Italians. Even Baltonsborough's boy, St Dunstan, was of foreign blood. Glastonbury has always been a melting-pot.

There are righteous eco-warriors who believe that all development is bad, and businessfolk who spuriously identify change with loss of trade. Yet the relentless force of Glastonbury's development nevertheless drives things onward, and resisters of change perhaps need to re-examine their anticipations, to become a sensible moderating influence rather than an obstructive force. Why? Because this is serious business. And, however 'profit' is measured in the future, it involves enormous potential paybacks.

We need to think ahead, to 2050 and 2100, not just 2003! We need to consider the changes going on in the world today, and Glastonbury's place in them. Here's an extreme proposition for your consideration: Glastonbury is the spiritual capital of Britain. Try that one for size! We need, without big-headedness, to consider such things.

Even if the Millennium passes as a mere blip, the Twentieth Century will be over, and many people will be looking at life with a new set of eyes. This will impact on Glastonbury, whether or not we do anything about it. Yet it could also be the greatest gift we ever received.

It might challenge us to unite truly as a community – by necessity. It might explode some old Glastonbury myths, prejudices and rifts. It might challenge us to share and serve in ways we've never dreamed of. It might call on every one of our organisational and spiritual skills, both at the same time.

You might think I'm being extremist here. If you're correct, that's fine. But if these 'mere fantasies' at all resemble future reality, it begs these questions: what do we do if it's true, and when are we going to start squaring up with it?

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© Palden Jenkins, 1992-1997. All of these articles are copyright. They may individually be copied and shared with others in a spirit of knowledge-sharing and fair play, but they may not be sold, printed or reproduced in quantity or changed in form without the permission of the copyright holder. Magazine and other editors may e-mail me for permission to reprint. E-mail: