Until 1677 when the Cut was dug and the waters of the Parrett were diverted, the river made a large, wide loop around Horsey Level by Puriton, and it was then immediately adjacent to the end of the Polden Ridge, which was a natural causeway across the marshy Somerset Levels. Roman ships could dock at Puriton “in the lee of the Poldens”, and thus the port here could have been important for the trade in metals mined in the Mendips. It may have been the one listed in the Ravenna Cosmography (a list of settlements in the Roman Empire) as Uxella.  The route would not have been direct, in fact it would have been more like three sides of a square, following the Polden Ridge until it met the Fosse Way, then going north to Beacon Hill (near Shepton Mallet), and then taking the Mendip road to the mining settlements at Priddy and Charterhouse. However, it would be by far the easiest route, avoiding the Levels which would have been a barrier. When the motorway link road was being made in the 1970s, a Roman settlement was discovered on Puriton Hill, which would have been adjacent to the port. The buildings seemed to be more like warehouses than domestic dwellings.

In 1936, Rev. C.C. Dobson wrote a small booklet “Did Our Lord visit Britain as they say in Cornwall and Somerset?”, in which he has collected various legends concerning a visit to Britain by Jesus with his great-uncle Joseph of Arimathea, during the time between his age 12 and 30, when the New Testament is silent as to his whereabouts. This booklet has run to a large number of reprints and editions up to 1999. The Cornish legend suggests that Joseph was a tin trader, and there are also individual traditions related to particular places in Cornwall. In Somerset, the general legend says that they came in “a ship of Tarshish to the Summerland, and sojourned in a place called Paradise”. (There is a place called Paradise at Glastonbury). There are also place legends attached to Priddy, the mining settlement on the Mendips, and Glastonbury. There was no tin in the Mendips – the main metal extracted there was lead (much used in Roman times) but there was also some copper and silver.

Rev. Dobson also quotes the Domesday Book as referring to “Domus Dei” (Home of God) in connection with Glastonbury, and a mention by St. Augustine that the old church there (destroyed in the fire at Glastonbury Abbey in the twelfth century) was thought of as having been divinely constructed.

Joseph would have originally come here as a metal trader, and not for any religious reason, and would have to have had a ship large enough for the carriage of heavy goods like metals. The shallow, marshy waters of the Levels would not have been navigable for such ships, so it would seem that ideas of landing on the Glastonbury islands initially would not have been likely. The port of Puriton, with its immediate access to the Polden access route, would seem far more so – and the name of the Parrett is similar to Paradise. 

There is no proof that Joseph of Arimathea ever came to Britain, not even for the traditions of his later arrival, when he was said to have been given twelve hides of land by the king for his community. As Dean Robinson of Wells has said, there are no earlier written mentions of this than the twelfth century, and we have no way of knowing how old the word of mouth legends of Somerset and Cornwall may be. But, as Rev. Dobson has said, the various independent traditions do not contradict each other in any way, and there are no others anywhere else in Britain, not even in Devon, which is between the two areas.

I would be interested to hear from anyone in the village who has any information about this.