111
Choir, looking East 115
Procession Path and Lady Chapel 129
Steps Of Chapter-house Vestibule And Passage Over Chain Gate 135
Chapter-House--Doorway 138
Chapter-House--Interior 139
Chapter-House--Vault 141
Chapter-House--Undercroft 142, 143
Section of Chapter-House 145
PLAN 160

[Illustration: Wells From The South-East.]

WELLS CATHEDRAL

CHAPTER I

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH

"The Gothic Cathedral," wrote Froude, an author who held no brief for
the Gothic period, "is perhaps, on the whole, the most magnificent
creation which the mind of man has as yet thrown out." The Cathedral
Church of Wells, wrote Froude's predecessor in the same historical
chair, is "the best example to be found in the whole world of a
secular church, with its subordinate buildings." "There is no other
place," Professor Freeman went on to say, "where you can see so many
of the ancient buildings still standing, and still put to their own
use." And surely there is no place better fitted to be their home than
this beautiful old city of Wells, set in the midst of the fair western
country, the land of Avalon and Camelot, of Athelney and Wedmore.

This unique group of buildings does not, however, take us back earlier
than the close of the Norman period. Of what existed before, we have
but scant evidence. Tradition says that King Ina had, about the year
705, founded at Wells a college of secular priests, and therefore a
church of some sort. And when King Eadward the Elder, taking advantage
of the peace which his father Alfred had secured, fixed, in 909, the
new Somersetshire see by the fountain of St. Andrew at Wells, he seems
to have chosen that little city because there already existed therein
a church, large enough to serve as a cathedral in those times, and
tended already by a body of secular canons. Now that the ancient
church of St. Andrew was raised to this new dignity, it was probably
in the tenth century rebuilt in stone, with plain round-headed
windows, and perhaps a small unbuttressed tower to hold the bells;
for, when Giso became bishop in the next century (1061-1088), he
erec