Qualla: Wells Cathedral

Wells Cathedral: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ad Meskens, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk into Wells Cathedral and the first thing that stops you is impossible to miss. At the crossing where nave meets transept, three enormous stone arches interlock in a pattern that looks less like medieval engineering than modern sculpture. These are the scissor arches, installed around 1338 when the central tower began to sink under its own weight. The solution was radical: inverted arches braced against upright ones, creating a figure of eight in stone that redistributed the load and saved the tower. Nearly seven centuries later, they remain the building's most startling feature, a moment where structural necessity produced something beautiful.

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Image: Ad Meskens | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wells Cathedral: Three Hundred Faces

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 3.0. The west front of Wells Cathedral is a gallery wall in stone. Approximately three hundred sculpted figures fill its facade, arranged in tiers of niches across the full width of the building. Kings, bishops, angels, and saints stand in carved company, many of them dating from the ...

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Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wells Cathedral: The Oldest Gothic

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lamiai, CC BY-SA 3.0. Building began around 1175 under the direction of Bishop Reginald de Bohun, making Wells one of the earliest examples of fully Gothic architecture in England. John Harvey went further, arguing that it was Europe's first truly Gothic structure, breaking from the last constraints o...

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Image: Lamiai | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wells Cathedral: The Clock That Jousts

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit IDS.photos from Tiverton, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. High on the north wall of the transept, an astronomical clock has marked time since the late fourteenth century. Its face displays the hours, minutes, the position of the sun and moon, and the lunar phase. Above it, a set of mechanical jousting knights circles on the quarter hour...

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Image: IDS.photos from Tiverton, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wells Cathedral: A Precinct Preserved

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rodw, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wells Cathedral is surrounded by one of the most complete medieval ecclesiastical precincts in England. The Bishop's Palace, moated and gated, sits to the south. Vicars' Close, a fourteenth-century residential street built for the cathedral's choir men, runs to the north and is c...

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Image: Rodw | CC BY-SA 3.0