The Holy Thorn on Wearyall Hill
Glastonbury, Somerset, United Kingdom
The hawthorn of Glastonbury legend, said to have grown from St Joseph of Arimathea's staff, flowering at Christmas, and repeatedly cut down and regrown on its hill above the town.
Wearyall Hill rises at the town's edge, and its summit tree is the latest of a line of hawthorns, descended from the original said to have flowered where Joseph's staff took root. The thorn's peculiarity is botanical as well as legendary: this Crataegus flowers twice, in spring and around Christmas, and grafts from the original grow at St John's Church and elsewhere in the town. The hilltop tree has been vandalized repeatedly in recent decades, most publicly in 2010, and new growth from saved cuttings has been replanted, so the tree on the hill is young, tended by the town, and guarded by its people's feeling for it.
The hill itself is short and steep, the walk twenty minutes from the town centre, and the view over the Somerset Levels puts the whole of Glastonbury's sacred geography in one frame: Tor, Abbey, town.
Visiting
The hill is a public right of way from Glastonbury town; no ticket, no gate, the whole hill open on foot.
Photo: [geograph.org.uk](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holy_Thorn_Tree,_Glastonbury_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2737162.jpg) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories