A City of Bells: Week 2

All Saints & Inside Wells Cathedral

The cover of Hodder’s A City of Bells with my November gourds and corn

“In November Torminster Cathedral commemorated its patron saint and benefactors. The Cathedral was great at festivals, each Christmas and Easter and Whitsun marching by in the procession of the days in flower-decked pomp, but in after years it seemed to Henrietta and Hugh Anthony that this particular festival surpassed all the others... it had a peaceful and rather wistful beauty that was unforgettable.”

🍂 Elizabeth Goudge, A City of Bells

Welcome to our Week 2 discussion on A City of Bells !

Today we will take a look at chapters 5-7, which take us deeper into the lives of our characters and the building at the center of this cathedral city.

Wells Cathedral boosts over 300 statues on its front face and dozens of intact tomb effigies. Stained glass, monuments and hundreds of years of building projects since its humble beginning in the eighth century:

“The earliest record of a church on the present site is a charter of 766. A bishopric was established in 909… Wells became a 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 nave and western transepts, belongs primarily to the first building phase and is constructed in the Early English style of Gothic architecture… it also retains much medieval stained glass… the cloisters were remodeled in the same style between 1420 and 1508. The cathedral was restored over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”¹

Wells is a church the reminds one of all who have come before, and that each life can be threaded together into something beautiful, good, and whole.

Today we will take a look at inside the cathedral where Henrietta and Hugh Anthony decorated, here the glorious hymns of All Saints’ Day, and see where Jocelyn is on his journey…

“The scissor arches in Wells Cathedral are one of the most distinctive and innovative architectural features in the cathedral. These unique structural elements are both functional and visually striking, playing a crucial role in the stability of the building. Constructed in the mid-14th century, specifically between 1338 and 1348. They were designed and built by master mason William Joy. The primary purpose of the scissor arches was to reinforce the central tower of the cathedral. The tower, which had been significantly heightened in the early 14th century, began to show signs of instability and threatened to collapse under its own weight. While their primary function is structural, the scissor arches also add a unique visual element to the cathedral’s interior. Their intricate design and dramatic form draw the eye upward, enhancing the sense of height and grandeur within the cathedral.” Photo and caption by Emma Newlan

Inside the Cathedral