Wells Cathedral

On our way down from Glastonbury Tor, we stopped into the Somerset Rural Life Museum. The kids loved the chickens roaming free and the museum was really informative and interesting even for the kids. This is a photo of the Tithe Barn where neighboring farms paid 10% of their crops to the Abbot or Bishop of the village.

We then travelled to Wells to view the magnificent cathedral there. It was a most impressive sight and sort of scary with the gray sky behind. I only have photos from the outside because I was too cheap to "buy" a photo license which would have allowed me to take photos inside. As an aside, I HATE when organizations charge an extra fee for things like this. Why not just give the option up front or including it in the price of admission/"donation", instead of herding you into the structure, then saying, "Oh, if you want to take pictures, there's an extra charge."? Like we all never considered using the cameras we brought... Such a gimick and it just figures that it happened at a church. Craig had already willingly gave our generous "donation" only to find we had to buy the license so we were both miffed.

Jesus and the twelve apostles

Front view

Courtyard view from outside the Cloisters

Anyway, there are over 300 statues and my most favorite area was The Lady's Chapel which had a painted relief of a mermaid/belly dancer on the ceiling where the arches met. In general the ceilings were fantastic and reminded me of Russian or Polish artwork with colorful flowery embrodiery-like decoration. Craig's was the scissors arch and the kids all liked the clock which had a mechanical display of knights jousting with one getting knocked over every 15 minutes. The stained glass was amazing. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Cathedral for any information you might want to read and for some good photos of the interior.