Wells Cathedral

Wells is a small market city, and its cathedral is out of all proportion to it. Begun around 1175, it was designed from the start in the new pointed style, and the architectural historian John Harvey called it the first truly Gothic building in Europe. It became a cathedral in the thirteenth century after a long tug-of-war between Wells, Bath and Glastonbury, which is why the bishop is still "of Bath and Wells". Most of the western half is Early English; the east end, the chapter house and the central tower belong to a second campaign in the Decorated style.

Stand on the green in front of the west front first. It holds some three hundred sculpted figures, and John Harvey rated it the supreme achievement of the combined arts in England. Inside, the first thing that stops everyone is the pair of strainer arches under the crossing: huge inverted arches inserted in 1338 by the mason William Joy when the heightened tower began to push the piers out of line. They look startlingly modern, like a pair of giant scissors across the nave.

Then follow the stone staircase that divides and turns up to the octagonal chapter house, where the ribbed vault springs from a single central column ringed with Purbeck marble shafts — a room Alec Clifton-Taylor called architecturally the most beautiful in England. In the north transept the astronomical clock of about 1325 still shows the sun and moon circling the Earth, jousting knights appear when it strikes, and a figure called Jack Blandifers strikes the quarters with hammers and heels. One branch of the staircase continues over Chain Gate to Vicars' Close, a street of houses built in the fourteenth century for the men who sang the services, and the Bishop's Palace stands in the same precinct.

Getting there

The cathedral is in the centre of Wells. Wells has no railway station: the nearest national rail station is Castle Cary, and buses run from Wells to Bristol Temple Meads in around an hour. Bristol Airport (BRS) is about 20 km away by road.