Glastonbury Abbey Visitor's Centre The Abbey Gatehouse, Magdalene St. Glastonbury, Somerset BA6 9EL 01458 832267 website

The Visitor's Centre with its award winning Museum, featuring a model of the Abbey as it might have looked in 1539, together with a display of the town; a Children's Display and the magnificent 16th century Othery Cope is an excellent place to visit on its own, or if the weather is poor.

Lake Village Museum The Tribunal, 9 High Street, Glastonbury, Somerset, BA6 9DP. 01458 832954/832949 Fax: 01458 website

The fascinating story of the Glastonbury Lake Village can be viewed in the Tribunal, a 15th century grade 1 listed building, that also houses the Tourist Information Centre. The Lake Village Museum, housed on the upper floor of the historic Tribunal building in Glastonbury High Street, presents a fascinating insight into everyday life in an Iron-Age settlement, dating from around 2000 years old, when much of Somerset’s landscape was covered by marshy sea. Although these marshes have long since been artificially drained, the excellent preservative properties of the peaty wetland soils in the Glastonbury area left an archaeological legacy of international importance.

Rural Life Museum Abbey Farm, Chilkwell Street, Glastonbury, Somerset BA6 8DB 01458 831197 Fax: 01458 834684 website

The Somerset Rural Life Museum is based in Glastonbury. In the Abbey Farmhouse the social and domestic life of Victorian Somerset is described in reconstructed rooms and there is a lively events programme as well as regular temporary exhibitions. There is also a tea room and museum shop. The magnificent fourteenth-century Abbey Barn is the centrepiece of the Museum. The barn and the farm buildings surrounding the courtyard contain displays and tools used in local rural activities such as mud horse fishing, peat digging and cider making.