Wells Cathedral
Wells Cathedral
Wells Cathedral was built entirely in the Gothic style in the late 1100s and serves the smallest city in England. One of the major glories of this cathedral is the West Front. It was begun in 1215 and, on its completion, boasted the largest collection of figurative statues in the western world at that time. It depicts the history of the world as told in the Bible, and shows Christ flanked by angels above statues of the disciples and kings as well as martyrs and confessors. The West Front is flanked by two towers.
Chapter House ceiling, Wells Cathedral
The West Front is now bare stone but in its medieval heyday, this would have been brilliantly painted with strong bold colours. Sound was also part of the religious spectacle. Within the cathedral is a special gallery where the choristers sang hymns to the people gathered outside. The sound was channelled to the outside thanks to a series of carefully hidden holes in the West Front. The singing would have occured on religious occasions such as Palm Sunday.
The original central tower of Wells Cathedral was damaged by an earthquake in the 13th century. The rebuilding took some 60 years to complete but, after just 20 years, cracks began to appear. In order to save the tower from collapse, the master mason, William Joy, built the 'scissor arches' that can still be seen in the main part of the cathedral and the hidden buttresses in the upper part of the church building.
700 years later, it is safe to say that these measures have been successful in preserving the tower for posterity. The cathedral boasts some of the finest medieval stained glass to be found in England which, miraculously, survived the Reformation and the Civil War. The 'Jesse' or 'Golden Window' dates back to 1340 and, thanks to its height, avoided the stones of the mob. The window traces the ancestry of Christ through Mary to Jesse, the father of King David, in the shape of a genealogical tree.
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