![]() ![]() The cathedral is thought to have been conceived and commenced in about 1175 by Reginald Fitz Jocelin, who died in 1191. The church at Wells, no longer a cathedral, had a college of secular clergy. Following the Norman Conquest, John de Villula moved the seat of the bishop from Wells to Bath in 1090. There is, however, some controversy over this. Wells Cathedral School, which was established to educate these choirboys, dates its foundation to this point. During this period a choir of boys was established to sing the liturgy. Athelm and his nephew Dunstan both became Archbishops of Canterbury. The first bishop of Wells was Athelm (909), who crowned King Æthelstan. In 909 the seat of the diocese was moved from Sherborne to Wells. In 766 Cynewulf, King of Wessex, signed a charter endowing the church with eleven hides of land. The font in the cathedral's south transept is from this church and is the oldest part of the present building. It was dedicated to St Andrew and stood at the site of the cathedral's cloisters, where some excavated remains can be seen. An abbey church was built in Wells in 705 by Aldhelm, first bishop of the newly established Diocese of Sherborne during the reign of King Ine of Wessex. ![]() The earliest remains of a building on the site are of a late- Roman mausoleum, identified during excavations in 1980. Unlike many cathedrals of monastic foundation, Wells has many surviving secular buildings linked to its chapter of secular canons, including the Bishop's Palace and the 15th-century residential Vicars' Close. The east end retains much ancient stained glass. Its Early English front with 300 sculpted figures is seen as a "supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England". The stonework of its pointed arcades and fluted piers bears pronounced mouldings and carved capitals in a foliate, "stiff-leaf" style. Historian John Harvey sees it as Europe's first truly Gothic structure, breaking the last constraints of Romanesque. Building began about 1175 at the east end with the choir. Its Gothic architecture is mostly inspired from Early English style of the late 12th to early 13th centuries, lacking the Romanesque work that survives in many other cathedrals. It has been called "unquestionably one of the most beautiful" and "most poetic" of English cathedrals. Its broad west front and large central tower are dominant features. It is moderately sized for an English cathedral. Built as a Roman Catholic cathedral from around 1175 to replace an earlier church on the site since 705, it became an Anglican cathedral when King Henry VIII split from Rome. It is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose cathedra it holds as mother church of the Diocese of Bath and Wells. Wells Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle. From the reflecting pool in the grounds of the Bishop's Palace ![]()
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