History of the Cathedral Church of Wells: As Illustrating the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old FoundationFreeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
History
History of the Cathedral Church of Wells: As Illustrating the History of the Cathedral Churches of the Old Foundation
Freeman, Edward A. (Edward Augustus)
Wells Cathedral
I think then on the whole that, even looking at the church by itself,
we have every reason to be thankful for what we have got. We have
not a church of the first order; but we have a church whose several
parts fit very well together, all whose parts have been finished, and
of which no part has been destroyed. And I may add that we may be
thankful for another thing, for the goodness of the stone of which the
greater part of the church is built. The sculpture of the west front
indeed has crumbled away; but elsewhere at Wells, as at Glastonbury,
wherever the work has not been wantonly knocked away, it is as good
as when it was first cut. Now we might have had a church like Chester
or Coventry, where the whole surface of the stone has crumbled away,
and where the whole ornamental design has become unintelligible. I
have said that the church of Wells forms a harmonious whole, that it
was perfectly finished, and that no part has been destroyed; and this
is a great thing to say. Let me compare the good fortune of Wells in
this respect with the cathedral church of a much more famous city at
the other end of England. At Carlisle there is a noble choir, ending
in what is probably the grandest window in England. If that choir only
had transepts, nave, and towers to match it, the church of Carlisle
would be a splendid church indeed. But the choir is built up against a
little paltry transept and central tower, and nothing remains by way
of nave but two bays of the original small Norman church, the rest
having utterly vanished. Here then is a church which does not form a
harmonious whole, a church which remains utterly unfinished, and of
which one essential part has been destroyed. Or, without taking such an
extreme case as this, we may compare our church with some of those of
which I have already spoken, with Hereford, Southwell, Beverley, and
Tewkesbury. In all of these some important feature has either never
been finished or has been destroyed at a later time. The church of
Wells then, simply taken by itself, claims a high place among buildings
of its own class, that is, among minsters of the second order. But,
as I began these lectures by saying, the real charm of Wells does
not lie in the church taken by itself, but in the church surrounded
by its accompanying buildings. Of some of these I must now speak a
word. I do not intend to go minutely into either their architecture or
their history; but some of them are inseparably connected both with
the fabric and with the foundation of the cathedral. And it is the
preservation of them which gives Wells its peculiar character. Each
part may easily be equalled or surpassed, but the whole has no rival in
England, and I cannot think that it has many in Christendom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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