We're going to take a short tour of Wells Cathedral today.
We'll start the tour in the
market square located at the end of
High Street in
Wells,
England.
We stayed in the
Crown Hotel last night (separate rooms, of course) and we're now ready to take a look at the
cathedral.
We head north across the square, walk through a beautiful old stone archway in the corner of the square and out along a sidewalk that leads out onto the cathedral Green.
The cathedral is only a couple hundred feet away so it's already starting to look pretty big.
We're approaching the cathedral at an angle with the front of the cathedral to the left and the side of the cathedral, including the cloisters, to the right.
The front of the cathedral, called the West Front as it faces west, has
two massive towers, one at each front corner.
Between the two towers is the front of the nave:
| |
| |
| |
| nave |
tower | | tower
+----+ +----+
| | | |
| | | |
+----+--------------+----+
The West Front _
|\
\ our first view
\ of the cathedral
\
The result is that the West Front of the cathedral is quite wide.
There are six columns(?) of sorts attached to the front of the building.
Arranged vertically in the columns and elsewhere along the front of
the cathedral are many stone statues of
saints and other
historical and biblical people.
Many of them are quite badly
eroded but the effect is still
quite impressive.
There's a row of twelve statues (the
Apostles?) right
near the top over the center of the nave.
Above this is the largest statue of all,
Jesus, with his hand raised
in
benediction.
There are
cornices, little
spires and other
ornamentation all over the place.
Although it is all a sandy brown colour today,
research during
restoration has shown that the entire front of the
cathedral would have originally been quite brightly coloured.
It would have been quite a sight!
Since one of the functions of a cathedral was to impress the people with
the grandeur of God,
I'd have to say that this front met the design criteria.
Arriving at the base of the tower on the right, we enter the cathedral via
the main (i.e. public) entrance.
The entrance fee is £4.50 per adult, £1.50 for children and
£3.00 for seniors and a photography permit which allows us to use
our cameras is an additional £2.
Formalities out the way and guide booklet in hand, we head into the nave.
There are tour guides offering free tours of the cathedral but we're going
to walk around by ourselves since I've been here before (maybe we'll take
a guided tour later on).
We're immediately struck by the high
ceilings with their delicate almost filigree style painting,
the stone columns,
the pointed gothic arches,
stained glass windows, and the long views.
Walking over so that we can see down the very center of the nave, we get
our first good look at the scissor arches that are holding up
the tower.
The central tower itself is about halfway down the length of the
cathedral from where we're standing.
The effect of the scissor arches is stunning (I'm sorry but I just
can't find the right words to describe it).
Walking slowly down the nave, we frequently find ourselves stopping to
look all around in order to try to take in the grazia of the place.
The scissor arches just keep getting more and more impressive as we
get closer to them.
The combination of sweeping curves and the whole scale of the arches
is truly amazing
They are, without a doubt, the most awe inspring
and totally integrated patch that I've ever seen (they were added
when the tower's foundations tower started to
crack in 1338 while the height of the tower was being increased).
When we get to the bottom of the central tower, we start looking up at the carved stone figures at the tops of the lower columns.
One set tells the story of a farmer catching a man and boy stealing fruit.
Another poor fellow has a toothache (it looks like it REALLY hurts).
Some of the carvings depict other aspects of medieval life while others are just faces (maybe the faces of some of the builders?).
One gets the distinct impression that the goal was to leave nothing without ornamentation of some sort.
Eventually, we head off to the left of the tower (as viewed from where we
started walking down the nave) and find ourselves looking up at
the cathedral's clock.
The face of the clock is a square with an astronomical motif.
The overall colour is green with lots of gold trim and decorative paintings
including angels in the corners and the Sun and Moon near the center.
The outer ring marks off the hours (all twenty four of them).
The next inner ring is marked off for the minutes of the hour.
Next is a ring of thirty markings to count of the days
of the lunar month.
Within the lunar ring, there's an exquisite painting of the Sun and
Moon along with a painting of Phoebe, the moon goddess.
At the very center is a ball representing the Earth (when the clock was
built, pretty well everybody knew that the Sun, the Moon and all of the
heavens revolved around the Earth).
Moving off further north from the central tower, we come across a doorway.
Looking through the doorway, we see my favourite set of stairs in the world
(a strange concept when one thinks about it).
The stairs lead to two different places, the Chapter House
and the Chain Bridge to Vicar's Hall.
Upon closer examination and after discussions with the cathedral staff,
we start to see how this came to be - the
original stairs curve up and to the right into the Chapter House (started
at the end of the 13th century).
When the Chain Bridge to Vicar's Hall was built about 150 years later,
the access to the bridge was built via a window which was turned into
a doorway.
The stairs were modified (another spectacular patch) to continue straight
on up to the window while still curving to the right into the Chapter House.
Truly amazing!
We walk up the stairs, taking the curve into the Chapter House.
The steps for the curved part of the staircase pivot around a single point
on the right as they rise into the Chapter House.
Each of these steps is basically a wedge that narrows down to nothing at
the pivot point and there are few railings so be careful!
The Chapter House itself is yet another masterpiece.
It's an octagon with stained glass in the exterior windows and one of
the most graceful roof support pillars in the center
that you'll ever see.
The stonework on the pillar, the ceiling and walls simply must be seen
to be believed (sorry).
As we walk out of the Chapter House, we look up a bit and happen to see
the oldest surviving stained glass in the cathedral.
There are only five rose shaped windows, each about 25cm in diameter,
but they've been there for about 800 years!
Sidebar: these five small windows are all that's left of the cathedral's original stained glass. For some reason, Oliver Cromwell's men didn't bother to break them when they destroyed every
piece of stained glass that they could reach (in all of the
cathedrals and abbeys of England) because they believed that such ornamentation was an affront to God.
It's actually rather strange as these windows are only four or five
meters off the ground (i.e. easily broken if they'd wanted to).
There's a rope across the entrance to the Chain Bridge so we head back into
the cathedral proper.
We turn left just before the central tower so that we can
walk along the side of the nave.
Here we see some
tombs along the inner (right) side
and
grave markers on the floor and walls.
Some of the tombs are quite impressive - probably the best one along this
side is the tomb of
Ralph of Shrewsbury,
Bishop in the 14th century and
builder of Vicar's Close, the oldest intact medieval street in
Europe.
Moving along the side of the nave, we come to the far end of the
cathedral where we find even more stained glass windows.
Coming up the other side, we come across a simply stunning sight - there's
a bishop's tomb here with an effigy of the bishop on top.
The effigy is carved from a white stone and depicts the bishop lying with
his head on a pillow and wearing a robe.
The bishop appears to be sleeping and
at the bishop's feet is a resting lion.
Sitting serenely with the most
precious expressions of adoration imaginable are two child angels
watching over the bishop with their hands resting on the bishop's pillow.
The sunlight is streaming
through the windows across the bishop's face and one of the angels.
The tomb itself is of a white marble with dark red veins and is
carved with what appear to be biblical scenes.
Sidebar: there are other really impressive tombs and other
architectural
features in this area that I've not described - apologies.
Eventually, we realize that we're getting a bit hungry so we decide to
move on.
Passing more tombs, we come to the central tower again.
On this side of the central tower, there's an ornate Saxon-era font that
is actually from the old cathedral (it takes a while to absorb the notion
that we're in the
new cathedral . . .).
After taking in some of the other sights on this side of the central tower,
we go immediately under the tower and see the entrance of
the quire (pronounced like choir) to our right.
Above the doorway into the quire, there's a spectacular set of organ
pipes.
Passing through the doorway, we find ourselves in an area
that looks a lot like a smaller chapel right in the center of
the cathedral.
To our left and right are the stalls that the priests and other clerics
would sit and stand in during services.
These are each elaborately carved and have colourful embroidered
backpieces.
The Bishop's Throne off on the right is the largest and grandest of all.
We aren't allowed to take pictures in this area as our
flash, if we were to use it, would cause the fabrics to fade.
Three wooden stall seat bottoms have been mounted on the wall with their
undersides visible.
These show off three elaborately carved misericords.
Looking around, we realize that each of the many stalls in this area
has a hinged seat bottom with one of these treasures almost casually
hidden underneath!
Walking out of the quire via one of the side entrances,
we head on down the side of the nave and eventually find ourselves
at the entrance again.
Although we realize that being "done exploring Wells cathedral" is a concept
devoid of meaning, it's noon so we have to head back into town to meet
some friends for lunch.
We're going to have to make sure that we get back to the cathedral this
afternoon to check out the cloisters and the foundations of buildings
that pre-date the existing cathedral (we're also determined to take a
walk all the way around the cathedral so that we can check it out from
the outside).
There's a lot more to see and, hopefully, there's still time to see it all!
A couple of notes are probably in order:
- I visited the city of Wells and toured the cathedral twice in 2000 and once again in 2002.
It's my favourite British cathedral although I have to admit to having
seen only about a half dozen of them so far.
- This "tour" is somewhat artificial as it skips past many features of
the cathedral that simply couldn't be missed in a real tour.
The "tour" is real in the sense that if you followed the route specified
then you would see the features described.
The intention is to take you to some of the highlights of the cathedral.
Hopefully, it has been successful.
- The central tower of the cathedral was intended to be a bell tower.
After the tower was struck by lightning shortly after the bells were
installed, struck again shortly after the tower and bells were repaired
and AGAIN after that repair work was done, the bishop "got the message".
- I may extend the tour to include the outside of the cathedral including
the cloisters.
Unfortunately, the Bishop's Palace to the south of the cathedral was
closed during both of my 2000 visits and I just didn't have time to see it and the cathedral in my 2002 visit so the tour won't be going there.
- Wells Cathedral is an incredible place.
If you're ever in Britain, you wouldn't make a mistake by putting it
on your itinerary.
- There are some photographs of the cathedral on my web site at http://www.bouletfermat.com/backgrounds/wells_cathedral.html (apologies if anyone considers this to be self-promotion).
I'm also contemplating writing a tour of the city of Wells.
Primary sources:
- my personal recollections and photographs from my visits to cathedral.
- The cathedral's web site at http://www.wellscathedral.org.uk (last accessed 2002/10/01).