page_title: Wells Cathedral
section_title: In the arts and popular culture
hierarchical_section_title: Wells Cathedral / In the arts and popular culture
caption_attribution_description: English: West Front of Wells Cathedral c.1795 by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Watercolour on paper
context_page_description: Wells Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle and seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose cathedra it holds as mother church of the Diocese of Bath and Wells. Built in 1176–1450 to replace an earlier church on the site since 705, it is moderately sized for an English cathedral. Its broad west front and large central tower are dominant features. It has been called "unquestionably one of the most beautiful" and "most poetic" of English cathedrals.
  Its Gothic architecture is mostly in Early English style of the late 12th – early 13th centuries, lacking the Romanesque work that survives in many other cathedrals. Building began about 1175 at the east end with the choir. Historian John Harvey sees it as Europe's first truly Gothic structure, breaking the last constraints of Romanesque. The stonework of its pointed arcades and fluted piers bears pronounced mouldings and carved capitals in a foliate, "stiff-leaf" style. Its Early English front with 300 sculpted figures, is seen as a "supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England". The east end retains much ancient stained glass.
context_section_description: The English painter J. M. W. Turner visited Wells in 1795, making sketches of the precinct and a water colour of the west front, now in the Tate gallery. Other artists whose paintings of the cathedral are in national collections are Albert Goodwin, John Syer and Ken Howard.
  The cathedral served to inspire Ken Follett's novel The Pillars of the Earth and with a modified central tower, featured as the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral at the end of the 2010 television adaptation of that novel. The interior of the cathedral was used for a Doctor Who episode, 'The Lazarus Experiment', while the exterior shots were filmed at Southwark Cathedral.
  An account of the damage to the cathedral during the Monmouth Rebellion is included in Arthur Conan Doyle's historical novel "Micah Clarke".
  The cathedral provided scenes for the 2019–2020 television series The Spanish Princess.
caption: West front as painted by J. M. W. Turner around 1795, watercolour on paper
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