Wells Cathedral

About

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.

The cathedral is a Grade I listed building. 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. The earliest record of a church on the present site is a charter of 766.

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. 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...