Cloisters to Cathedral Church of St Andrew Wells, England

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WELLS

ST5445 CATHEDRAL GREEN 662-1/7/34 (East side) 12/11/53 Cloisters to Cathedral Church of St Andrew (Formerly Listed as: CATHEDRAL GREEN Cathedral Church of St Andrew (including Chain Gate and Cloisters))

GV I

Cloisters. Early C13. The walks renewed in 3 stages in C15: 1420-35 to east; 1460-70 to west; 1490-1508 to south. Doulting ashlar with pink rubble to outer walls; lead roofs. Inner sides have 2 storeys of 13 bays to the N and S ranges, and a single storey of 11 bays to the E, articulated by buttresses to a drip and coped parapet. Each bay has a full-width 6-light window with a shallow arch springing from the buttress sides, with Perpendicular tracery and a transom; on the first-floors are 2 flat-arched mullion windows with trefoil heads, and gargoyles over alternate buttresses, though none on the E range. The N bays are narrower with shallow-arched doorways; on the N range project 2 low, shallow paired arches with weathered coping to bays 4 and 6 from the N. The early C13 outer walls of pink rubble, formerly rendered, with late C15 upper walls and buttresses: the S range has C14 crenellated gables each end, that to the E with an early C13 trefoil-arched entrance containing a cinquefoil cusped doorway and C13 door. The E range has a semi-octagonal stair turret at the N end; the 3 N bays formerly the 1488 W wall of the Cloister Lady Chapel are ashlar, the outer ones with 4 trefoil-arched mullion windows, the central bay with a doorway beneath a shallow gabled cornice, with good tracery panels with ogee cinquefoil heads and 2 upper mullion windows, and extending onto the flanking buttresses. Vault shafts with mouchettes to the springers of lierne vaults forming octagons, with bosses and central carved panels; the W range has an external segmental-arched doorway with stiff leaf capitals 4 bays from the N, and a Tudor-arched doorway in the first bay from the N; the entrance to the S transept set to the right of the cloister, with an early C13 arch of 2 orders one a richly-carved foliate arch, on banded shafts, with a Perpendicular panelled ribbed door. The first-floor library in the E range c1430 has arch-braced cambered tie beams, with 11 C13 head corbels to the N end, and a roll-moulded ridge. MONUMENTS: There is a generous scattering of wall tablets in the 3 walks, mostly of the late C18 and C19, and generally of white marble. Numbering bays from the left those of special interest include: E walk, bay 3 a large baroque cartouche to Richard HEALY, of 1713, and plainer tablet to Nathaniel PALMER, d.1706: bay 6 has a carved tablet above a moulded tomb or door surround, and in bays & and 8, set to the wall at bench level, 2 large carved bosses from Stillington's chapel; in bay 11 a large plain panel to William CLAVER MORRIS, d.1726, surmounted by a marble bust, and carried on a florid coat of arms; bay 13 has a large plinth memorial to Peter DAVIS, carved in 1749 by Benjamin Bastard of Sherborne. On the plinth a weeping cherub, against a lofty dark marble pyramid. S walk, bay 8 a plain inscribed tablet to Bishop CREYGHTON, d 1672, surmounted by a bishop's mitre; bay 10 has 2 upright medieval stone coffins; in bay 11 a small baroque cartouche with cherubs, and dense, wayward lettering, to Samuel HILL, d.1715/16, and in bay 13 a full-height monuments, the finest in the cloister, to Bishop George HOOPER, d.1727, including cherubs, supporting columns and open baroque pediment. The W walk has many scattered tablets, but in bay 6 a large high relief figure in white marble on plinth to John PHELIPS, d.1834, signed by Chantrey.

Listing NGR: ST5510945816