Holiday in the Mendips, part 2 - Wednesday sightseeing in Wells
When last seen, I was being let into my room at the Crown Inn at Wells at 12.30, rather than having to wait for the normal check-in time of 4 pm. My room was around the side of the hotel, looking out onto the market square - which was full of stalls as it was market day. Over breakfast my landlady in Priddy had given me her top tourist top for Wells, which was to be inside the cathedral with a view of the interior clock on the hour, as the clock did interesting things then. There's a side-entrance to the cathedral just off the market square and I quickly headed out again to catch the 1 pm show. I got confused by the one-way system immediately inside the entrance and located the clock just as it was starting to chime, but I still caught most of the jousting tournament taking place above the dial. It is an impressive clock, dating from around 1390, and is one of the two oldest working clocks in the world. In fact, it does its act on every quarter hour, and I caught it a second time while I was doing a tour of the cathedral. I spent about an hour inside and felt I'd got value out of my £6 "suggested donation".
I was particularly taken with a set of five stained glass windows in the Lady chapel. The window in the centre is the Jesse window, depicting Christ's family tree, and is more-or-less as designed (and looking good after recent restauration work), but the others look very "modern and experimental", where you can see recognisable fragments of faces and flowers and so on but a lot is purely abstract, and I stood for some time wondering how much sense I was supposed to be making of it all. A volunteer saw me puzzling, and told me that the windows had been destroyed by Puritans during the Civil War - except for the canopies, which were too high for their poles to reach. The fragments were stored for 200 years, and in the 1840s the stained-glass artist Thomas Willement restored the Jesse window to something close to the original appearance. In the early 1900s a jigsaw-puzzle-loving dean had apparently managed to piece together one panel of another window, but it took well over a year and his wife finally had enough of having the dining-table covered in broken glass, and it was decided to just put the remaining fragments together any way they would fit. In fact, it's not entirely random and you can see the crafts-people trying different things out in different sections, and the effect is fascinating.
When I emerged around 2 pm I found that the market was packing up and thought I had timed that badly as market food would have been just right for lunch. However, I found a stall that was still serving grilled cheese sandwiches (though their main thing of deep-fried mac and cheese was over), and I had a nice chat with the young man during the five minutes grilling time. It turned out that my movements for the rest of the week were the same as this local market, i.e. it would be in Shepton Mallet on Friday and Frome on Saturday. I mentioned the Frome Independent market and he said that was a whole other level, and that thousands of people came for that, but generally enthused about the independent shops and eating places in Frome. The sandwich was excellent, and I hope to come across the Big Munch stall again.
I took a break from the rain in my room, drinking tea and reading in a comfy chair by the window that was also close to a radiator. It was an excellent set-up for a rainy afternoon. The rain eased off around 3 and I headed out to see more of the town. The first main feature I found was the moated Bishop's Palace, which I believe has appealing gardens inside but it was too grey and damp a day for gardens and I just did a circuit of the moat, which is lovely in itself. I came across quite a few way-markers for the East Mendip Way, and at the far side of the palace I saw the entrance to the woods where it leaves the town; they looked very atmospheric, but also likely to be drippy and slippery. Heading back into town I found Vicar's Close on the opposite side of the cathedral to the palace, which is probably the most distinctive feature in Wells: the only intact medieval street in England, dating from about 1430 (and apparently the oldest residential street in Europe). There was a woodwind lesson underway in one of the houses just inside the entrance to the close, and a few doors down from the close was Wells Cathedral School, and there were several music lessons underway there, too. Wells is amazing. It doesn't have a train station and so is a bit difficult to visit by public transport, but that's possibly helped in its preservation.
As soon as I saw that Wells had a Thai restaurant with adequate reviews, I cancelled the dinner bookings that my travel company had made for me in the hotel, as I was still in the mood for the green curry that I hadn't been able to get in Cheddar. They were open from 5 pm and I was hungry so arrived around 5.30. The curry was very good and I found I had room for dessert so had the sticky rice with mango, also excellent. For most of the meal I was the only person in the restaurant, but then a family party of six arrived for a birthday meal and the staff sat them right next to me. There was a screen between the tables, but there were also 12 other tables available. Maybe they were all booked, but I suspect not. Very odd.
The restaurant faced the sculpture-studded West Front of the cathedral across Cathedral Green, so I did some more exploring in the damp dusk, with another visit to Vicar's Close. And then home for more tea and reading.
See photos of Wells
When I mentioned to people locally that I was staying at the Crown Inn, they would, "Oh, the Hot Fuzz pub!" When I was checking in, I'd noticed a photo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost inside the entrance, but I don't think I'd made the connection with the film at the time. I'd seen the film when it came out but didn't have clear memories of it, and so I watched it as soon as I got home. In the film, they say that the county to which Simon Pegg's over-keen London copper is being banished is Gloucestershire, but in fact it was very much filmed in Wells. Pegg's character stays in The Swan, which is around the corner from the Crown Inn, not on the market square and thus without the views, but the nightly drinking sessions all take place in the Crown Inn. Most of the landmarks I'd admired feature in the film, but not Vicar's Close, presumably because it's so distinctive it would been distracting. The filming must have taken over the centre of town for weeks and weeks, and the next time I visit, I will ask what that was like. This entry was originally posted at https://helenraven.dreamwidth.org/488434.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I was particularly taken with a set of five stained glass windows in the Lady chapel. The window in the centre is the Jesse window, depicting Christ's family tree, and is more-or-less as designed (and looking good after recent restauration work), but the others look very "modern and experimental", where you can see recognisable fragments of faces and flowers and so on but a lot is purely abstract, and I stood for some time wondering how much sense I was supposed to be making of it all. A volunteer saw me puzzling, and told me that the windows had been destroyed by Puritans during the Civil War - except for the canopies, which were too high for their poles to reach. The fragments were stored for 200 years, and in the 1840s the stained-glass artist Thomas Willement restored the Jesse window to something close to the original appearance. In the early 1900s a jigsaw-puzzle-loving dean had apparently managed to piece together one panel of another window, but it took well over a year and his wife finally had enough of having the dining-table covered in broken glass, and it was decided to just put the remaining fragments together any way they would fit. In fact, it's not entirely random and you can see the crafts-people trying different things out in different sections, and the effect is fascinating.
When I emerged around 2 pm I found that the market was packing up and thought I had timed that badly as market food would have been just right for lunch. However, I found a stall that was still serving grilled cheese sandwiches (though their main thing of deep-fried mac and cheese was over), and I had a nice chat with the young man during the five minutes grilling time. It turned out that my movements for the rest of the week were the same as this local market, i.e. it would be in Shepton Mallet on Friday and Frome on Saturday. I mentioned the Frome Independent market and he said that was a whole other level, and that thousands of people came for that, but generally enthused about the independent shops and eating places in Frome. The sandwich was excellent, and I hope to come across the Big Munch stall again.
I took a break from the rain in my room, drinking tea and reading in a comfy chair by the window that was also close to a radiator. It was an excellent set-up for a rainy afternoon. The rain eased off around 3 and I headed out to see more of the town. The first main feature I found was the moated Bishop's Palace, which I believe has appealing gardens inside but it was too grey and damp a day for gardens and I just did a circuit of the moat, which is lovely in itself. I came across quite a few way-markers for the East Mendip Way, and at the far side of the palace I saw the entrance to the woods where it leaves the town; they looked very atmospheric, but also likely to be drippy and slippery. Heading back into town I found Vicar's Close on the opposite side of the cathedral to the palace, which is probably the most distinctive feature in Wells: the only intact medieval street in England, dating from about 1430 (and apparently the oldest residential street in Europe). There was a woodwind lesson underway in one of the houses just inside the entrance to the close, and a few doors down from the close was Wells Cathedral School, and there were several music lessons underway there, too. Wells is amazing. It doesn't have a train station and so is a bit difficult to visit by public transport, but that's possibly helped in its preservation.
As soon as I saw that Wells had a Thai restaurant with adequate reviews, I cancelled the dinner bookings that my travel company had made for me in the hotel, as I was still in the mood for the green curry that I hadn't been able to get in Cheddar. They were open from 5 pm and I was hungry so arrived around 5.30. The curry was very good and I found I had room for dessert so had the sticky rice with mango, also excellent. For most of the meal I was the only person in the restaurant, but then a family party of six arrived for a birthday meal and the staff sat them right next to me. There was a screen between the tables, but there were also 12 other tables available. Maybe they were all booked, but I suspect not. Very odd.
The restaurant faced the sculpture-studded West Front of the cathedral across Cathedral Green, so I did some more exploring in the damp dusk, with another visit to Vicar's Close. And then home for more tea and reading.
See photos of Wells
When I mentioned to people locally that I was staying at the Crown Inn, they would, "Oh, the Hot Fuzz pub!" When I was checking in, I'd noticed a photo of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost inside the entrance, but I don't think I'd made the connection with the film at the time. I'd seen the film when it came out but didn't have clear memories of it, and so I watched it as soon as I got home. In the film, they say that the county to which Simon Pegg's over-keen London copper is being banished is Gloucestershire, but in fact it was very much filmed in Wells. Pegg's character stays in The Swan, which is around the corner from the Crown Inn, not on the market square and thus without the views, but the nightly drinking sessions all take place in the Crown Inn. Most of the landmarks I'd admired feature in the film, but not Vicar's Close, presumably because it's so distinctive it would been distracting. The filming must have taken over the centre of town for weeks and weeks, and the next time I visit, I will ask what that was like. This entry was originally posted at https://helenraven.dreamwidth.org/488434.html. Please comment there using OpenID.