Wells is probably our favorite English cathedral: begun in the 12th century, very early Gothic, the amazing 14th century scissors arches that saved the building, the best west facade in England, maybe north of the Alps, with its 300 sculpted figures, and enough quirks to keep you amused the whole day; and so on. We had 4 days left on our rental, the run of the island, and this was the one place we really wanted to see again.
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Nearing Wells (close to Bath), Glastonbury Tor
in the distance; everything's pretty close together
out here |
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Working on the west facade; see any of my several previous
posts (search "Wells" in the search box) for pix |
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Wells is normally not crowded, but this time it was nearly
deserted; and silent: the making of documentary video
was underway |
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First sight of the scissors arch is something I'll
never forget; you walk in, expecting to find a nice
typical Medieval cathedral and then see the arch
and think: that's not Medieval! That's not even...
modern...that's contemporary architecture! But,
no, after the 1275 earthquake, the massive central
tower was subsiding, and three of these "scissors"
arches were built to buttress the tower...in the 1340s!
Utterly singular; and beautiful |
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Even the 13th century clock, oldest and best,
had been turn off to accommodate the filming
underway |
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Because of COVID, the wonderful chapter house
was closed |
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| North aisle |
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| Chancel glass; wonderful 13th century |
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| Oldest cope chest |
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And some really old tombs...1060 this guy; seeing burials this
old is quite rare, especially this well preserved |
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| And this one 999 |
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| Baptismal font from earlier Romanesque church |
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| Patron saint of dentists, hygienists, oral surgeons |
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| Cloister |
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| Sir David Suchet, pretty famous actor, doing the documentary |
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Maybe convertible pants aren't so unfashionable
after all |
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| Really old door |
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A lot of things at Wells are old |
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| We walked a bit of the Bishop's palace grounds |
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Palace guard attempting to train birds to pull a string to ring a
bell...for a treat |
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| Looking back to the cathedral |
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| Bishop's palace moat |
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In the pretty little town, something that reminded
us of the many plague monuments we saw in central
and eastern Europe |
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| Beautiful Wells |
1 comment:
Wow! You saw David Suchet! I'm so impressed! He is a favorite of mine!
I'm sure I read your Wells Cathedral blog entry way back when, but somehow the photos and commentary in this article really impressed me. Love the scissors arches...so contemporary for sure. Great engineering design for any age. Amazing that it was not damaged in bombing of one of the great wars.
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