City in Somerset, England
Wells
England's smallest city has a cathedral with a medieval clock whose knights still joust every quarter hour, and swans that ring a bell when they want lunch.
Key information
- County
- Somerset
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 12,000, 2021 Census (12,083)
- Known for
- Wells Cathedral, the Bishop's Palace and its swans, Vicars' Close
- What locals are called
- Wellensians
- Famous people
- Thomas Linley, Bishop Jocelyn of Wells, Ralph of Shrewsbury
About Wells
The swans that ring for their supper
In the moat around the Bishop's Palace, the swans have learned to tug on a rope attached to a bell beneath a gatehouse window. Do it, and food appears. The tradition dates to the 1850s, when a daughter of Bishop Lord Auckland taught the swans to ring for their food, and generations of swans have since passed on the trick. The moat is no mere decoration. The palace, home of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, was fortified in the 14th century under Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury, with crenellated walls, a drawbridge and water all round. It still looks more like a castle than a bishop's house, which was rather the point. The palace gardens also hold the springs that gave Wells its name, welling up from the foot of the Mendip Hills.
A cathedral that changed English architecture
Wells Cathedral, begun around 1175, is often described as the first English cathedral built wholly in the Gothic style, with pointed arches from the outset rather than a Norman design updated bit by bit. Its west front is crowded with hundreds of medieval statues, many of them life-size or larger, making it one of the great sculpture galleries of Europe. Inside, the famous scissor arches in the nave are a startling piece of engineering. Added in the 1330s, these giant inverted arches braced the central tower after it began to sink under the weight of a new upper stage. They look like a modernist flourish. They were an emergency repair. The chapter house, reached by a worn staircase that curves up like a ship's sail, ends in a stone-ribbed ceiling that fans out from a single central pillar.
The clock where knights never win
The cathedral's astronomical clock in the north transept dates from the late 14th century and is among the oldest surviving clock faces of its kind in the world. It shows the sun, the moon's phases and the hour, with the Earth at the centre. Every quarter hour, mounted knights spin round in a tournament above the dial. One knight is repeatedly unseated. A little figure known as Jack Blandiver, seated nearby, strikes the quarters with his heels and the hour with a hammer. Outside the cathedral, two armoured figures strike a bell with axes on the quarters, so there is a double act for visitors.
Europe's oldest medieval street
Vicars' Close is often billed as the oldest purely medieval residential street in Europe still in use. Built in the 14th century to house the cathedral's vicars choral, it is a tidy double row of terraced houses, each with a tall chimney. The chapel stands at the northern end and Vicars' Hall at the southern end. The vicars once lived in a community, taking meals together in the hall, and the houses are still lived in today. It connects to the cathedral by the Chain Gate, a covered bridge that allowed the vicars to walk to services without stepping into the market-town bustle below. Nearby, the Market Place has hosted markets for centuries, and the Bishop's Eye gateway and Penniless Porch, where beggars once asked for alms from worshippers, frame its edges.
Why a tiny city is a city at all
Wells is a city because of its cathedral rather than its size, which is why it is England's smallest. A bishop's seat has been here since 909, and for centuries the town was an ecclesiastical centre, not an industrial one. That is also why it never grew as Bristol or Bath did, and why the medieval centre survives so intact. The title of the diocese, Bath and Wells, reflects a long rivalry between the two churches over who should hold the bishop's seat, and the compromise left both names attached. Today visitors come for the cathedral, the palace, the Mendip hills on the doorstep, and Wells' status as a gateway to Cheddar Gorge and the Somerset Levels. Locals, the Wellensians, are fond of their small-city status and unlikely to trade it.