Gleying

The process of waterlogging of soil in which iron is bacterially reduced under anaerobic conditions. Gleying may result from a raised water table or from impeded drainage within the soil profile - especially in bogs, fens, floodplains, lakes, and swamps. The soil is blue, gray, or olive in coloring and forms gley horizons.

Waterlogging of soils. Gleying may result from a raised water table, or from drainage impedance within the soil profile; the latter condition occurs in some podzols. (labelled ‘Glastonbury style’), iron objects, including currency bars, and much bonework, mostly connected with the production of woven woollen textiles (weaving combs, shuttles etc). The village may have concentrated on the production of woollen cloth, since the faunal remains were dominated by sheep (between 80 and 90 per cent of the total fauna). Pottery and metalwork were also produced in the village. (2) The monastic foundation of Glastonbury often features in the history and legends of the Early Christian period. The monastery Was probably in existence as early as 600, at a time when Saxons and Britons were fighting for control of the region, and it has thus inevitably been linked with King Arthur. In about 705 King Ine of Wessex was persuaded by Bishop Aidhelm to build a church at Glastonbury, and under Bishop (later Archbishop) Dunstan in the mid-10th century it became one of the richest and most influential monasteries in England. Excavations in the 1950s demonstrated the growth of the pre-Conquest abbey, revealing a particularly interesting sequence of buildings. The primary church and its ancillary buildings were of wattle construction; in the next phase, traces of Ine’s stone church were found, with flanking chapels which had painted wall plaster and opus signinum floors. Under Dunstan, large-scale replanning and enlargement of the complex were carried out.The only known examples of Anglo-Saxon glass furnaces were discovered during the excavations.