Name: Frederick Bligh Bond: A Career in Ruins
Start: 2025-11-11T19:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-11-11T20:00:00+00:00
Location: Abbey House

Frederick Bligh Bond was Glastonbury Abbey's first Director of Excavations, but he is perhaps best-known today as the father of ‘psychic archaeology’. In his controversial book The Gate of Remembrance (1918) Bond revealed that he had conducted the first long term field experiment in psychical research during his years at the abbey. At the same time Bond publicized a scheme of sacred geometry underlying the monastery's ground plan and even claimed to have discovered a numerical code embedded in its architecture. Bond’s revelations resulted in his dismissal from the abbey and have tarnished his reputation ever since. Can any of this be taken at face value?
Join Dr Tim Hopkinson-Ball as he explores Frederick Bligh Bond's career at Glastonbury Abbey. Tim will address Bond’s discoveries, thought and beliefs, as well as suggesting answers to questions concerning the man and his legacy. Was Bond a Spiritualist? Was he involved with the occult? What was his relationship to Dion Fortune, Alice Buckton and the other luminaries of the ‘Avalonian Revival’? To what extent has Bond’s thought influenced the New Age and ultimately, what did Bond contribute to our understanding of the archaeology and history of Glastonbury Abbey?
Dr Tim Hopkinson-Ball is an independent scholar and Chair of the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society. He has lectured widely on Glastonbury’s history and traditions. Tim is also the author of numerous papers, including the only academic study of the cultus of Our Lady at Glastonbury. He is also author of The Rediscovery of Glastonbury, a biography of Frederick Bligh Bond, the first Director of Excavations at the abbey, and Glastonbury: Origins of the Sacred, a study of the evolution of the abbey's foundation story.