in 1911 The village was first built circa 250
B.C. and occupied until approximately 50 B.C. when it was abandoned, possibly due to a rise in the water level. It was built on a morass on an artificial foundation of timber filled with brushwood, bracken, rubble and clay. At least of clay were transported to the site from higher ground around away. The village housed people in five to seven groups of round houses, each for an extended family, with sheds and barns, made of
hazel and
willow covered with reeds, and surrounded either permanently or at certain times by a wooden
palisade. There were gaps in the palisade and is believed by Minnitt and Coles to have been used to stabilise the clay floors rather than for defensive purposes. At its maximum occupation the village may have had 15 houses in use with a population of up to 200 people. Two distinct phases of occupation have been identified. Early houses were timber framed square or rectangular and built of oak but later buildings were circular huts. Some of the clay spreads were used for barns or animal enclosures rather than houses. The village was close to the old course of the
River Brue and was thought to be surrounded by water, hence the title "Lake Village"; however more recent work suggests the title
Swamp Village may be more appropriate as for most of the year the surrounding land was not open water. The Brue was an important water-borne trade route from central Somerset to the
Severn Estuary. The village was approached by causeways up to long and log boats have been recovered from sites close to the village at what may have been a landing stage which was repaired and rebuilt several times. Despite the wet surroundings vegetable and small domesticated and wild mammals, including beaver and otter, made up more of the diet than fish. The remains of wheat, barley and beans have also been recovered.
Excavation The lake village, a
crannog or man made island, was discovered in 1892 by local medical student
Arthur Bulleid, whose father was a local mayor and the founder of the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society. Bulleid had heard about the lake villages in
Switzerland and believed similar sites could be found in his native Somerset. The
excavation of the area began in 1892 and continued over the next 15 years, uncovering the extent of the settlement and publishing the results. From 1892 until 1899 Bulleid worked with labourers for six months of each year and spent the other six months describing and cataloguing the finds. He then left the site to complete his medical studies and returned in 1904 with Harold St George Gray to continue the excavation until 1907. The curator of the
Taunton museum of the
Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, Gray had been trained in archaeological techniques by the archaeologist
Augustus Pitt Rivers. They found remains of the village. It consisted of a series of 89 mounds from to in diameter, made up of clay laid over the boggy ground, many of which had central hearths. The whole site was surrounded by a wooden palisade made from
Alder. Each of the finds from large timber to small fragments of pottery were drawn and described with some also being photographed. In 1909 the site was visited by
George V while he was the
Prince of Wales, along with his wife. They were given a silver replica of the Glastonbury Bowl. Much of the timber was reburied as the best way of preserving it, and a survey in 2005 found this to have been quite successful, despite reports warning of the area drying out and the peat coverage being reduced. The site is included in the
Heritage at Risk Register produced by
English Heritage because of the risk to the buried timbers if the site dries out further. Bulleid and Gray later went on to excavate a similar site at
Meare Lake Village approximately south west of the Glastonbury site. Small scale excavations were later carried out on the site by Michael Avery (unpublished), the Somerset Levels Project, Somerset County Council Heritage Service and the South West Heritage Trust. A film is available about the most recent excavations. The landscape of the settlement has been modelled in
3D and turned into a short film. A replica of the canoe from the site has also been made and launched. == Artefacts ==