Wells Cathedral and the Sea of Steps
In which I visit one of the most glorious cathedrals in England, and try to recreate famous photograph that was taken there.
A little marble angel sits, smiling over the tomb of one of Wells Cathedral’s late bishops. It is as if he knows that fortune itself has smiled on the city of Wells and its beautiful cathedral.
Built between the 12th and 14th centuries, Wells is considered England’s first true Gothic cathedral. Just seven miles from Glastonbury, Wells Cathedral escaped the destruction that Glastonbury Abbey suffered during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries. It wasn’t completely untouched - during the transformation from Catholicism to Anglicanism the interior was stripped of its painted decorations, and the ceilings and walls were whitewashed.
The resulting light-filled interior is a sight to behold. Gorgeous ribbed columns and pointed stone arches draw your eye upward to the creamy white vaulted ceiling, elegantly stenciled with red and black ornaments. The famous - and monumental - scissor arches between the nave and the choir are a slightly later addition, built to support the weight of the tower that lies directly above them. In the 14th century the tower was enlarged - reportedly to compete with nearby Salisbury Cathedral - and the extra weight proved too much for the existing cathedral wall. Cracks began to form, and master mason William Joy was called in an attempt to fix the problem. The unique arches that he built - really three sets piled on top of each other - are not only beautiful but structurally ingenious. They’ve been holding the cathedral in place for almost seven hundred years now…
