Wells Cathedral

Wells Cathedral stands in the small city of Wells in Somerset, beside the Bishop’s Palace and its medieval precincts. The present building rises on the site of an earlier church recorded in a charter of 766. Beneath the cloister lie the remains of the tenth-century cathedral, while the present structure was largely built in two campaigns between about 1180 and 1345. The nave and western transepts belong to the first phase in Early English Gothic, and the lady chapel, chapter house and central tower to the second in Decorated Gothic. Two Perpendicular towers were added to the west front between 1385 and 1410, and the cloisters were remodelled in the same style up to 1508. The cathedral is recognised as one of the most beautiful in England, and the architectural historian John Harvey called it Europe’s first truly Gothic building. Its west front carries three hundred sculpted figures and has been praised as the supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England. Nikolaus Pevsner, however, described the same façade as spare, with harsh uprights and horizontals like steel scaffolding. The cathedral continues to host daily Church of England services and receives more than three hundred thousand visitors each year. Inside, the cruciform plan opens into a spacious nave leading to the choir and lady chapel. The font in the south transept comes from the seventh-century church on this site and is the oldest part of the present building. The chapter house retains much medieval stained glass, and the cloister walks surround a peaceful green. Outside, the Bishop’s Palace and Vicars’ Close stand within the same precincts, offering quiet courts and medieval halls to explore.