There are places whose history survives in stone, and there are places where something older seems to survive through the way people continue to live, gather, care for one another and care for the land.
On our most recent return to Bride’s Mound at Beckery, on the western edge of Glastonbury, something had unmistakably changed.
We had visited this part of town several times before and watched the landscape through different seasons. We had also seen some of its rougher edges: neglected ground, abandoned vehicles, caravans, piles of discarded material and areas that felt as though they had somehow slipped between the cracks of the Glastonbury most visitors know.
This time, it felt different. Not polished or sanitised, and certainly not transformed into another carefully curated tourist attraction, but alive.
Food was being grown. People were gathering. Young people were skating. Women were training and lifting heavy weights. Previously neglected areas were being cleared and reclaimed. The hedgerows were heavy with berries, wildlife flourished in the wetter land beyond the town, and wherever we went there seemed to be another small reminder of Brigid.
At the centre of all this lies Bride’s Mound — ancient Beckery — a place associated for centuries with Goddess Bridie as well as St Brigid of Kildare.
The more we explored the surrounding landscape, the more it seemed that many of the qualities Brigid represented were appearing all around us.
Bride’s Mound at Beckery, where a new chapter is unfolding around one of Glastonbury’s oldest sacred landscapes.
Brigid Was Never Only a Saint of Churches
The stories surrounding St Brigid are strikingly practical. Again and again, she feeds people, gives things away, cares for animals, welcomes strangers and helps those without wealth or influence.
Milk, butter, cattle, food, hospitality, healing, shelter and generosity occur repeatedly in the early traditions surrounding her. Brigid’s holiness is rarely presented as something separated from ordinary life; it happens in kitchens and fields, beside animals, around fires and within communities.
Her great foundation at Kildare eventually became an important religious centre, yet the Brigid portrayed in her early Lives is never remote from the world. She is deeply involved in it.
Perhaps that is one reason what is happening around Beckery feels so appropriate. The land traditionally associated with Brigid is becoming communal again.
Bridie’s Yard: Food, Trust and Community
One of the loveliest surprises of our visit was Bridie’s Yard.
From outside, I had imagined we were simply walking into a small organic shop. Instead, we discovered a wonderfully unconventional community space.
Inside, food could be weighed and purchased with a refreshing amount of trust and simplicity. When we arrived, a woman was making pizzas and explained that later that evening people would return for a community pizza night, sharing food together.
There was something incredibly warm about it. It did not feel like an elaborate hospitality business or carefully manufactured experience. It was simply food, people and a willingness to share.
Our first glimpse of Bridie’s Yard — a small doorway into a much larger story of food, community and regeneration in Beckery.
Bridie’s Yard also belongs to a wider local story involving food growing, community resilience and the rediscovery of a more direct relationship with the land.
Standing there, it was impossible not to think of Brigid. The old stories repeatedly describe her feeding others and giving away food, sometimes apparently far beyond what should have been available. Her abundance is expressed through sharing.
A modern community food space is obviously not a medieval monastery, but the values would hardly have been unfamiliar to her.
A Landscape That Has Known Neglect
The transformation felt more significant because Beckery has not always had an easy recent history.
The western edge of Glastonbury is very different from the historic centre around the Abbey and High Street. Beckery became strongly associated with industry, and mills, manufacturing and eventually the Morlands complex reshaped much of the surrounding landscape.
In more recent decades, parts of the area have experienced dereliction, discarded material, informal occupation and complicated questions surrounding land use. On earlier visits, we had seen caravans and vehicles gathered in places that appeared neglected, and there were areas where rubbish had accumulated.
Travelling with our sons and visiting the skate park during our first visits, there were moments when the surroundings did not always feel particularly comfortable.
Glastonbury has always attracted travellers, seekers, pilgrims and alternative communities. Someone we spoke to at the White Spring described how people sometimes arrive for Glastonbury Festival or simply fall deeply in love with the wider Glastonbury landscape and find it difficult to leave.
Whether or not that explains any particular settlement around Beckery, the idea says something important about this quirky town: people become attached to it, sometimes fiercely.
The problems arise when temporary occupation, inadequate facilities, uncertain stewardship and accumulated rubbish combine and a landscape begins to feel abandoned.
What struck us this time was how visibly that atmosphere was changing.
Reclaiming Beckery
Across several visits, we had actually watched parts of this transformation unfold.
Areas that had previously contained discarded material had been cleared. Community effort was becoming visible. Planters appeared. Land was being cultivated. Places that had once looked forgotten began to look cared for.
One of the changing spaces around Beckery, where neglected ground is gradually being reclaimed and given new purpose.
It would be easy to describe this simply as regeneration, but something more interesting seemed to be happening.
People were not merely making Beckery tidier. They were giving it purpose again.
Caring for a place is something that sits extraordinarily comfortably beside Brigid. Her stories repeatedly suggest that holiness is expressed through practical acts: feeding someone, protecting an animal, offering shelter and sharing what is available.
A landscape changes when people begin behaving as though it matters.
Strength Beside the Mound
Then there was the gym.
We had already noticed groups jogging outside and people exercising around the building close to Bride’s Mound. Inside, women were lifting heavy weights while music pumped through the open-fronted training space.
There was something wonderfully powerful about it. They reminded me of Amazonians — the warrior women of Themyscira — strong, focused and completely at home in their own physical Wonder Woman power!
Then I noticed the name.
Sweet Track.
CrossFit Sweet Track on Beckery Old Road — modern strength beside a landscape carrying thousands of years of human history.
There is no ancient connection between the gym and Brigid simply because of its name, of course, but the coincidence became much stranger because earlier that same day we had unexpectedly found ourselves walking somewhere else called the Sweet Track.
The Ancient Sweet Track
We had actually been trying to find an otter walk.
Instead, as sometimes seems to happen in Glastonbury, we ended up somewhere entirely different and found ourselves exploring part of the Avalon Marshes.
There we encountered information about the ancient Sweet Track.
The Sweet Track: a prehistoric timber route through the Somerset wetlands, created thousands of years before medieval Glastonbury existed.
The original Sweet Track is one of Britain’s oldest known timber trackways. Built during the Neolithic period, around 3800 BC, it carried people across the wetlands of the Somerset Levels using an extraordinary construction of wooden poles and planks.
Thousands of years before Glastonbury Abbey existed, people were already engineering routes through this watery landscape.
The Levels we see today have been profoundly altered by drainage. For prehistoric communities — and even much later populations — this was a world shaped by marshes, reed beds, channels of water, islands and occasional areas of higher ground.
That ancient geography matters enormously when thinking about Beckery. Modern roads make it easy to forget that places such as Bride’s Mound once existed within a very different landscape: an island-like place in the marsh, a refuge and a crossing point between water and land.
When Somerset Was Brown, the Wetlands Stayed Green
During our visit, the contrast across the landscape was dramatic.
Much of southern Britain had been suffering through an extraordinarily dry period. Fields were brown, road verges were scorched and even Glastonbury Tor looked strange from a distance.
Instead of the emerald-green mound we were accustomed to seeing, the Tor had faded until the colour of the hill almost merged with St Michael’s Tower standing above it.
Yet around Beckery and the wetter land beyond it, life continued.
There was still green grass, water, reeds, trees and animals grazing.
The survival of moisture in the landscape suddenly made the ancient geography much easier to understand. This had always been a place shaped by water, and wherever water remained, life gathered around it.
Even during an exceptionally dry summer, the wetter landscape around Beckery and the Somerset Levels continued to hold pockets of vivid green life.
Brigid and the Cattle
The cattle became another recurring presence.
At the bottom of Beckery Hill, we spotted beautiful long-haired cattle grazing in the field. Later in the trip, when we stayed in one of the wooden glamping huts close to Her Well, another small family of what appeared to be Highland cattle grazed outside — two adults and a calf.
At sunset, they looked almost unreal.
Highland cattle grazing at sunset close to Her Well — an image that felt especially resonant in a journey filled with Brigid’s traditional symbols.
Of all the animal associations surrounding Brigid, cattle are among the strongest. Cows, milk and dairying run throughout the traditions concerning her.
Some of the most famous stories tell of milk miraculously replenished, butter produced in abundance and cattle protected or restored. The cow became one of the most enduring creatures associated with the saint.
It therefore felt strangely appropriate to encounter them repeatedly around this particular landscape.
Not as proof of anything, but as one more thread woven quietly through the journey.
And Then Came the Swans
The swans were different because they had already become personal symbols for me before this journey.
During our previous trip to Wells, we experienced a memorable encounter with swans that stayed with me afterwards. Brigid herself had also already become connected with the image in another deeply personal way.
At the White Spring in Glastonbury stands a large statue of Brigid with a swan resting across her lap. I loved the statue so much that before I even released she was situated in the Spring I had already bought a smaller version of the same clay figure.
So when we walked out into the wetlands after accidentally discovering the Sweet Track and encountered swans again, the moment carried a significance that was difficult for me to ignore.
The swans we encountered beside the wetlands — already a deeply personal symbol for me through Brigid, the White Spring and our previous journey through Wales.
We had set out looking for otters and instead found a family of swans.
Two adults moved between the grass and water while younger birds remained nearby. The wetlands were vividly green despite the dry summer landscape beyond them. Reeds stood around the water’s edge and lily pads floated across the surface.
Moving between water and land, the swans seemed perfectly at home in a landscape that still remembers its ancient marshland character.
There are many swan traditions within Celtic and Irish mythology, although it would be misleading to suggest that every one of them belongs specifically to Brigid.
But symbolism does not always have to be historical scholarship. Sometimes it becomes personal through repetition.
For me, the swans were already connected with Brigid through Wells, the White Spring statue and the statue I had previously brought home. Finding them here, on this particular day and in this particular landscape, felt like another quiet conversation running beneath the journey.
And the day was not finished.
The Swan That Led Us to the Flame
Later, we stopped for a drink in Glastonbury.
As we sat outside, there was another swan — this time not a living bird, but a white swan figure in the garden.
It caught our attention precisely because of everything that had happened earlier that day.
We walked across to look more closely and realised that beside it, almost hidden away, was an entire shrine to Brigid.
Hidden in a Glastonbury pub garden (The Beckets Inn), a shrine to Brigid beside another white swan — discovered only hours after our encounter with the swan family in the wetlands.
There was information about Brigid, offerings, a Brigid’s cross and a flame.
We asked the woman working there about it. She explained that she tended the flame herself and that it had originally come from the White Spring.
That detail stopped me in my tracks.
The White Spring was already part of this story through the statue of Brigid and her swan. Now, after encountering the living swans earlier that day, another swan had quite literally drawn our attention towards Brigid once again.
I do not feel any need to decide exactly what these coincidences mean.
For me, much of their beauty lies simply in noticing them.
Someone Has to Keep the Flame Burning
Brigid’s association with sacred fire is one of the most enduring aspects of her tradition.
At Kildare, generations of women were said to have tended a perpetual flame associated with Brigid. The tradition disappeared for centuries before eventually being revived, and a Brigid flame burns once more today.
What I find particularly moving is the practical reality behind the symbolism.
A perpetual flame does not remain alight through symbolism alone. Someone has to tend it, notice when it weakens, protect it and pass it on.
At that small shrine on the Glastonbury highstreet, the ancient idea suddenly became wonderfully ordinary.
A woman behind a bar was keeping Brigid’s flame alive.
There was something deeply moving about that.
Bride’s Mound: One of Glastonbury’s Oldest Christian Places
Not far away lies Bride’s Mound itself.
Its archaeology reveals that Beckery was an important early Christian site long before medieval Glastonbury reached the height of its fame. Excavations uncovered evidence of an early timber chapel, later stone structures and a cemetery associated with a small religious community.
Dozens of burials were discovered there, and scientific dating demonstrated that religious activity at Beckery reaches far back into the early medieval period.
One particularly early grave appears to have been treated differently from the others and may have functioned as an important tomb or shrine around which later activity developed.
What archaeology cannot tell us is that St Brigid herself was buried there. The historical Brigid is traditionally associated with Kildare in Ireland.
But Beckery’s longstanding connection with Brigid is significant in its own right.
Tradition remembered this place as hers. For centuries, it carried names associated with Bride or Brigid.
Pilgrims came here.
And now, remarkably, they are coming again.
Offerings Appearing on the Mound
This was perhaps the most moving change of all.
On an earlier visit to Bride’s Mound, I had left a few tiny offerings. At the time, there had been almost nothing there and the ground beneath the marker was bare.
I left some crystals, shells and a Brigid’s cross that I had made myself. They were simple things, intended only as a small gesture of remembrance and gratitude.
When we returned this time, everything had changed.
The Bride’s Mound marker surrounded by offerings left by visitors — a remarkable change from the almost completely bare site I had encountered previously.
There were crystals, shells, bracelets, stones, feathers, handmade objects, flowers, crosses and even an earring.
Someone had left a beautiful piece of cloth marked Bride’s Mound.
Crystals, shells, jewellery, feathers and handmade gifts — small offerings revealing how many people are quietly finding their way back to Bride’s Mound.
The significance was never the monetary value of any of these things. Most were tiny.
What mattered was the evidence of people.
One person after another had stood where we had stood and felt compelled to leave something behind.
When I had first placed those few shells and crystals there, the space had felt almost forgotten. Now there was evidence of pilgrimage — not organised tourism or institutional religion, but something quieter and more intimate.
Someone comes and leaves a stone. Another leaves a bracelet. Someone makes a cross.
Gradually, the ground begins to tell the story of all the people who have passed through.
Brigid and the Art of Giving Things Away
There is something beautifully Brigidian about an offering place composed almost entirely of small things.
Brigid’s stories are filled with giving. Often, much to the frustration of those around her, she gives away things she was apparently supposed to keep: food, milk, possessions and resources.
Her generosity frequently makes very little economic sense, yet the stories repeatedly return to the same mysterious principle — that abundance can emerge through sharing rather than hoarding.
That idea seemed to be appearing everywhere around Beckery.
At Bridie’s Yard, food was being shared. Volunteers and local people were caring for neglected ground. Young people shared the skatepark. People exercised together. Pilgrims left gifts for strangers they would never meet.
These are very different worlds, but the instinct beneath them feels remarkably similar: to contribute something.
Young Glastonbury Beside Ancient Glastonbury
One of the things I loved most about the area this time was the mixture of generations.
Beside this extraordinarily ancient sacred landscape sits a skatepark.
For our son, Louie, that mattered rather more than early medieval archaeology.
Louis at the Beckery skatepark — modern Glastonbury growing up beside one of the town’s oldest sacred sites.
On previous visits, the wider area had occasionally felt uncertain enough that we remained slightly cautious. This time the skatepark was full of life.
People came and went, the atmosphere was relaxed, music travelled from the nearby gym and young people filled the park.
Just beyond it all stood Bride’s Mound.
Skateboards, graffiti and ancient sacred ground sharing the same landscape — a reminder that living heritage does not have to become a museum.
There was something wonderfully Glastonbury about the juxtaposition.
A place carrying more than a thousand years of Christian history sits beside graffiti, skateboards, CrossFit equipment and pumping music.
Sacred landscapes do not have to become museums.
Perhaps part of surviving is allowing another generation to make noise beside them.
The Dragon Appears
Glastonbury being Glastonbury, another thread appeared while we were wandering through town.
A mural we visit whenever we return had changed again. This time, it had become a dragon.
The ever-changing back street Glastonbury mural had become a dragon — another symbol that unexpectedly echoed themes already running through our journey.
Normally, I might have thought little more about it.
But dragons had already become another recurring symbol through our recent journeys, and so there it was again on a Glastonbury wall in the middle of a trip already filled with repeating imagery.
Swans, fire, water, cattle, Brigid, the Sweet Track — and now dragons.
Sometimes travel becomes less about reaching destinations and more about noticing what keeps appearing between them.
Brigid Belongs at the Edges
Perhaps there is a reason this story belongs at Beckery rather than only in the polished centre of Glastonbury.
Brigid has always seemed comfortable at boundaries.
Her stories repeatedly place her alongside people others might overlook: the hungry, the poor, women without power, travellers, children, animals and those requiring shelter or healing.
Beckery itself occupies a boundary too — between Glastonbury and the Levels, town and wetland, industry and countryside, archaeology and legend, the tourist town and the Glastonbury where people actually live.
It is an edge place.
And Brigid has always belonged unusually well at the edges.
A Landscape Coming Back to Life
Perhaps that was ultimately what felt so different this time.
The change could not be reduced to one building, one archaeological project, one shop or one community initiative. The entire western edge of Glastonbury seemed to be shifting.
We saw food being grown where land had once looked neglected, wildlife thriving beside the waterways, cattle grazing on green grass while much of the surrounding countryside had turned brown, women demonstrating extraordinary strength and young people filling the skatepark.
We encountered community projects built around sharing rather than profit. We discovered Brigid’s flame being quietly maintained. At Bride’s Mound itself, we saw physical evidence that more people were finding their way there.
Perhaps regeneration always begins this way: not with one enormous gesture, but through hundreds of small acts of kindness and attention.
Someone clears rubbish, someone plants flowers, someone grows food, someone repairs a building, someone welcomes a stranger, someone teaches a child, someone leaves a crystal beneath a sign.
And someone keeps a flame burning.
A Different Kind of Glastonbury Pilgrimage
Most visitors to Glastonbury know where they are expected to go.
The Tor, the Abbey, Chalice Well, the White Spring and the High Street are extraordinary places and deserve their place within the Glastonbury pilgrimage.
But I would add somewhere else now.
Walk west towards Beckery.
Find Bride’s Mound.
Look beyond the industrial buildings and notice what is changing there. Visit Bridie’s Yard. See what is being grown. Watch the skaters. Listen to the people training nearby.
Then continue towards the wetter landscape and remember that Glastonbury once rose from marsh and water.
Look for cattle in the fields and swans beside the waterways.
When you reach Bride’s Mound, look carefully at the tiny things people have left behind.
Because perhaps sacred places are not only places where something extraordinary happened centuries ago.
Sometimes they are places where people are still deciding, collectively, that something matters.
Bride’s Mound no longer feels forgotten.
People are finding it. People are caring for the land around it. People are leaving gifts. Communities are growing, food is being shared, children are playing, women are working out, animals are grazing and water continues to hold life in the landscape.
And somewhere nearby, someone is still tending Brigid’s flame.
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