Wells Cathedral

Wells Cathedral
Cathedral Church of St Andrew
West front of Wells Cathedral
51°12′37″N 2°38′37″W / 51.2104°N 2.6437°W / 51.2104; -2.6437
Location	Wells, Somerset
Country	England
Denomination	Church of England
Previous denomination	Roman Catholic
Website	wellscathedral.org.uk
History
Dedication	Saint Andrew
Consecrated	23 October 1239
Architecture
Heritage designation	Grade I listed building
Designated	12 November 1953[1]
Style	Gothic (Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular)
Years built	1176 – c. 1490[1][2]
Specifications
Length	126.5 m (415 ft)[3]
Width	20 m (66 ft)[3]
Width across transepts	47 m (154 ft)[3]
Nave height	20.5 m (67 ft)[3]
Number of towers	3
Tower height	38 m (125 ft) (western)[3] 55 m (180 ft) (crossing)[3]
Bells	10
Administration
Province	Canterbury
Diocese	Bath and Wells (since c. 909)
Clergy
Bishop(s)	Michael Beasley
Dean	Toby Wright
Precentor	Mary Bide (Acting)
Chancellor	Megan Daffern
Archdeacon	Anne Gell (Wells)
Laity
Organist(s)	Alexander Hamilton (Acting)[4]

Wells Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of St Andrew, is a Church of England cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England. It is the seat of the bishop of Bath and Wells and the mother church of the diocese of Bath and Wells. There are daily Church of England services in the building, and in 2023 it was reported to receive over 300,000 visitors per year.^[5] The cathedral is a Grade I listed building.^[1] The cathedral precincts contain the Bishop's Palace and several buildings linked to its medieval chapter of secular canons, including the fifteenth-century Vicars' Close.^[6]

The earliest record of a church on the present site is a charter of 766.^[1] A bishopric was established in 909, however in 1090 the cathedral of the diocese was moved to Bath Abbey and remained there until Wells became co-cathedral in 1218.^[1][7] The remains of the tenth-century cathedral lie to the south of the present building, beneath the cloister. The present cathedral has a cruciform plan with a chapter house attached to the north and a cloister to the south, and is largely the result of two building campaigns which took place between c. 1180 to c. 1260 and c. 1285 to c. 1345. The western half of the cathedral, including the nave and western transepts, belongs primarily to the first building phase and is constructed in the Early English style of Gothic architecture. The east end, including the lady chapel, eastern transepts, chapter house, and central tower, belongs to the second phase and uses the Decorated Gothic style; it also retains much medieval stained glass.^[1][7][8] Two towers were added to the west front between 1385 and 1410 in the Perpendicular Gothic style, and the cloisters were remodelled in the same style between 1420 and 1508. The cathedral was restored over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.^[1][7]

Wells has been called "unquestionably one of the most beautiful" and "most poetic" of English cathedrals.^[9][8] The architectural historian John Harvey sees it as Europe's first truly Gothic structure, breaking from the last constraints of the Romanesque style.^[10] The west front, which contains 300 sculpted figures,^[8] has been described by Harvey as the "supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England",^[11] however the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described it as "spare", with "harsh uprights and horizontals [...] like steel scaffolding".^[7]