The revised edition of 'Free State' should be going to the printers next week. Today, just in time, I have received this from Paul Fletcher, the Chalice Well's archivist. The text, which provides information that I didn't know before to do with the role of the Glastonbury Conservation Society in the affair, has been checked and cleared by the Chalice Well's trustees:

Concerning the Demolition of the Tor School and the Tor School House on the Chalice Well site (1971-1975):

In 1959 the Chalice Well Trust, founded by Wellesley Tudor Pole, acquired within its curtilage the Tor School and the Tor School House (once known as Anchor Lodge). The four principle objectives, or charitable purposes, of the Trust as recorded in the founding deed have remained the same since its inception. One of the powers of the Trust, or things it could do, was to: “Provide accommodation and in particular a hostel or guest house and refreshment for visitors to the said Chalice Well”.

By the early 1970s the Board of Trustees had increasing concerns about the deteriorating condition of the buildings. At no point did the then Trustees see the old Tor School as a building fit for pilgrims or visitors. The main unlisted school building was in a dangerous state. The outside wall was bowed out and in danger of falling into Chilkwell Street.  As recently as 2012, a visitor who attended Millfield (as Tor School became), confirmed that internal metal supports were coming loose as the traffic thundered by and boys were shaken in their beds as they slept. The Trust commissioned a survey which declared the building was in ‘a dangerous state and should be demolished’.

There were ‘long prior consultations with local officials’ regarding the demolition and all would have proceeded quietly but for two things. Because the demolition would have meant the closure of Chilkwell St. the Council had asked for a postponement from June (the holiday season) to October. During this time the newly formed Glastonbury Conservation Society asked the Secretary of State to list the Tor School House (the Anchor Lodge building, not Tor School). This was duly done just before October thus preventing demolition. However it does appear there was not complete consensus as Alderman Humphrey Morland, Chairman of Glastonbury Conservation Society wrote, ‘I would like to see the lot removed. The Chalice Well Trustees want to make a beautiful garden there.’ (14-12-73)

The whole process then took nearly two years through hearings, appeals, solicitor’s letters etc. and finally in June 1975 the case for and against demolition of Tor School House was heard at a public inquiry in front of Inspector K. Dodds.

At the hearing the Chairman of Chalice Well Trust, C.L.S. Cornwall-Legh, gave evidence at length about the Trust’s purposes, its charitable status, the reasons for demolition (including the prohibitive cost of saving the Tor School house, improving access to the Chalice Well and it’s Little St Michael’s guest house, and also improving the gardens as visitor numbers were increasing quite quickly). The inquiry heard that the Tor School House was ‘in a very bad state of repair’ with ‘narrow passageways’ and a ‘hodge podge of rooms’ and in an ‘awkward juxtaposition to the main road’. It was just not feasible to restore such a building.

The Secretary of State, Anthony Crosland, considered all the evidence and said, ‘The public interest would best be served by granting listed building consent for demolition.’ He found completely in Chalice Well’s favour. It was pointed out that Glastonbury Conservation Society had cost the Chalice Well Trust thousands of pounds in legal fees over the period and never once spoke directly to the Trust before going into full-scale opposition. However Humphrey Morland said, ‘In my view the work of the Trustees of Chalice Well has been entirely for the benefit of the community in general and the town in particular. The Tor House School is badly constructed.’ It was pointed out that during this whole period there was never any expense to rate payers and Chalice Well Trust bore all the expenses of this episode.

Gradually thereafter the Trust was able to improve its accommodation, build a meeting room, and establish a small shop at the exit from the gardens. The lower garden was beautified and developed to include the flow- form falling into the vesica pool, the herb garden, eco toilets and provision of space for community events and celebrations including the Conversation Café at Wheel of the Year events.

I've got something else wrong: there's a piece in Chapter 5 (pages 35-37) about the Old School Building at the Chalice Well, which was demolished in 1973 - at a time when temporary accommodation for the new breed of 'Glastonbury pilgrims' was desperately needed. At the time this caused considerable controversy, and in particular I quoted Patrick Benham, writing in 'Torc' magazine, as saying that the Chalice Well Trust's original Deed of Trust 'states quite clearly that the obligations of the Trust include the setting up of a hostel and meeting centre'. 

This, it seems, is not true - though it was widely believed at the time. Tudor Pole's reasons for insisting that the building be purchased were quite different, to do with securing the property so as not to allow a different group of people to gain control of what was essentially an integral part of the Chalice Well gardens. Having secured it he promptly leased it to Milfield School, and by the time the building was eventually demolished it was in very bad condition and unfit for use as a hostel anyway.

The Chalice Well Trust's own history says virtually nothing about all this, but I am hoping that documents still held in the Chalice Well archive will help me to fill out the story and perhaps finally put an end to a controversy that has never really been resolved.

The book says rather briefly (Chapter 34) that when Fred and Colleen Rosado became Guardians at the Chalice Well, "They took on new staff, converting old garages to office space, which in turn meant sorting out the mountains of paper and archive material which had never been sorted since the first days of the trust. This led to the setting up of the Chalice Well archive." This sorting was actually carried out by Alan and Pauline Royce, and Alan has sent me this story:

Pauline had been here for a while and I moved down to be with her after we married in 1995. Having read Patrick Benham's 'The Avalonians' as an entry into the local history, I ended up, at Pauline's instigation, sorting out the library at Little St Michael's, Chalice Well. Fred and Colleen seemed to like the results so they gave me some of the older papers in the old garage to sort through.

These turned out to include material on Wellesley Tudor Pole's great archaeological adventures in Constantinople, so we pointed out that these were historic stuff and needed conserving. In the midst of this process, having found material on Alice Buckton's period, I took the opportunity afforded by the first 'candlelit evening' in the gardens to attempt to use vision to contact the land spirits of the site, to ask for clues as to where more historic material could be found. 

A spokesman was finally granted me and he told me to "look in the attics" and he showed me Alice Buckton's 'Druid sword.' Bemused by this, we wondered if he meant the attics of folk in town who had memorabilia from Alice's time (and whether she had seen herself as a druid!) We were greatly surprised when, a week or two later, an attic hatch was discovered leading into the roof space above where the garage lay. Sure enough, piles of archive material was stacked up there - some of it just beginning to be incorporated into a monster wasps' nest!

We made an attempt to survey the stuff and even published some of it (in the 'Chalice Well Messenger' of 1998 and in 'Avalon magazine' No 9, summer 1998). We also put on an Alice Buckton exhibition. Tracey Cutting was inspired to write her 'Beneath the Silent Tor' biography of Alice, and we pushed for a permanent archive room for the safekeeping of what had been found. Tim Hopkinson-Ball arrived about then and he and his partner took on the task of cataloguing the material. [The archivist at Chalice Well is now Paul Fletcher.]