The Secrets Of Wells Cathedral | The First Gothic Cathedral In England

Join Alice Loxton as she unveils the secrets of Wells Cathedral, getting up close and personal with all aspects of the building's history. Among other things, that means abseiling down the cathedral's facade - not for the faint hearted!

Also in this video, we’ll be getting inside the mind of a medieval mason, we’ll be uncovering the mysteries of the magnificent chained library and we’ll be traversing stones which are so weathered by time that they have been compared to a rolling ocean.

The cathedral we see today was begun in 1176, and completed over the next couple of centuries. The endeavour paid off, because the result is quite magnificent. The west front of Wells is one of the most glorious examples of medieval architecture in the world.

Because cathedrals took so long to build, the fashions often changed whilst they were being built. So, Durham Cathedral, for example, has rounded Romanesque arches at one end and pointed Gothic at another. But at Wells, the fashions stayed the same throughout the building process, so it was built in the Gothic style all the way through, and so this building is the first truly Gothic cathedral in the world. The nave here is quite plain, in Early English Gothic style.

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