Wells () is a cathedral city and civil parish in Somerset, England. It is located on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills, south-west of Bath, south of Bristol, and north-east of Taunton. At the 2021 census, the population of the parish was 11,145 and the population of the built-up area, which extends into the neighbouring parish of St Cuthbert Out, was 12,105.
Wells has held city status since medieval times, because of the presence of Wells Cathedral. Often described as England's smallest city, it is actually the second smallest to the City of London in area and population, but unlike London it is not part of a larger urban agglomeration.
Wells takes its name from three holy wells dedicated to Saint Andrew that lie within the grounds of the Bishop's Palace and cathedral and supply water to the marketplace. A small Roman settlement surrounded them, which grew in importance and size under the Anglo-Saxons when King Ine of Wessex founded a minster church there in 704. The community became a trading centre based on cloth making and Wells is notable for its 17th-century involvement in both the English Civil War and the Monmouth Rebellion. In the 19th century, transport infrastructure improved with stations on three different railway lines. However, following the Beeching axe in 1964 the city has been without a railway link.
The cathedral and the associated religious and medieval architectural history provide much of the employment. The city has a variety of sporting and cultural activities and houses several schools including The Blue School, a state coeducational comprehensive school that was founded in 1641, and the private Wells Cathedral School, which was founded possibly as early as 909 and is one of the five established musical schools for school-age children in the United Kingdom. Wells's historic architecture has led to the city being used as a shooting location for numerous films and television programmes.
History
The city was a Roman settlement that became an important centre under the Anglo-Saxons when King Ine of Wessex founded a minster church in 704. Two hundred years later, in 909, it became the seat of the newly formed bishopric of Wells; but in 1090, the bishop's seat was removed to Bath. The move caused severe arguments between the canons of Wells and the monks of Bath until 1245 when the bishopric was renamed the Diocese of Bath and Wells, to be elected by both religious houses. With the construction of the current cathedral and the bishop's palace in the first half of the 13th century, under the direction of Bishop Reginald and later Bishop Jocelin, a native of the city, Wells became the principal seat of the diocese.
The 8th-century port at Bleadney on the River Axe enabled goods to be brought to within of Wells. In the Middle Ages overseas trade was carried out from the port of Rackley. In the 14th century a French ship sailed up the river, and by 1388 Thomas Tanner from Wells used Rackley to export cloth and corn to Portugal, and received iron and salt in exchange. Wells had been a centre for cloth making; however, in the 16th and 17th centuries this diminished, but the city retained its important market focus. Wells in the 19th century had the largest cheese market in the west of England.
Wells was listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Welle, from the Old English , not as a town but as four manors with a total of 132 households, which implies a population of around 500–600. Earlier names for the settlement have been identified which include Fontanetum, in a charter of 725 granted by King Ina to Glastonbury and . "Tidesput" or "Tithesput furlang" relates to the area east of the bishop's garden in 1245. Wells was part of, and gave its name to, the hundred of Wells Forum.
Wells had been granted charters to hold markets by Bishop Robert (1136–66) and free burgage tenure was granted by Bishop Reginald (1174–1191). Wells was recognised as a free borough by a Royal charter of King John in 1201. The city remained under episcopal control until its charter of incorporation from Queen Elizabeth I in 1589.Wells City Council The Council City status was most recently confirmed by Queen Elizabeth II by letters patent issued under the Great Seal dated 1 April 1974, which granted city status specifically to the civil parish; on that date major local government reorganisation came into effect, which involved the abolition of the municipal borough of Wells.Vision of Britain Wells MB
Anne of Denmark, the wife of King James came to Wells on 20 August 1613. She was entertained by a pageant performed by the town's trades and crafts. The blacksmiths presented Vulcan's forge. The butchers made a tableau of "old virgins", with their attires made of cow tails and necklaces made of cow's horns, who were drawn in a chariot by men and boys dressed in ox skins. The mayor, William Bull, held a dinner for members of the queen's household including her four maids of honour.John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 2 (London, 1828), pp. 672-5. The Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini recorded her delight.Allen Hinds, Calendar State Papers, Venice: 1613-1615, vol. 13 (London, 1907), pp. 36-7 no. 70.
During the English Civil War (1642–1651), at what became known as the "Siege of Wells", the city found itself surrounded by Parliamentarian guns on the Bristol, Glastonbury and Shepton Mallet sides. Col. William Strode had 2,000 men and 150 horse. The Royalists evacuated the city. Parliamentarian troops then used the cathedral to stable their horses and damaged much of the ornate sculpture by using it for firing practice.
William Penn stayed in Wells shortly before leaving for America (1682), spending a night at The Crown Inn. Here he was briefly arrested for addressing a large crowd in the market place, but released on the intervention of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. During the Monmouth Rebellion (1685) the rebel army attacked the cathedral in an outburst against the established church and damaged the west front. Lead from the roof was used to make bullets, windows were broken, the organ smashed and horses stabled in the nave. Wells was the final location of the Bloody Assizes on 23 September 1685. In a makeshift court lasting only one day, over 500 men were tried and the majority sentenced to death.
Wells' first station, Priory Road, opened in 1859 on the Somerset Central Railway (later the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway, S&DJR) as the terminus of a short branch from Glastonbury. A second railway, the East Somerset, opened a branch line from Witham in 1862 and built Wells East Somerset station to the east of Priory Road. In 1870, the Cheddar Valley line branch of the Bristol & Exeter Railway from Yatton, reached Wells and built a third station at Tucker Street. Matters were simplified when the Great Western Railway acquired the Cheddar Valley and the East Somerset lines and built a link between them that ran through the S&DJR's Priory Road station. In 1878, when through trains began running between Yatton and Witham, the East Somerset station closed, but through trains did not stop at Priory Road until 1934. Priory Road closed to passenger traffic in 1951 when the S&DJR branch line from Glastonbury was shut, though it remained the city's main goods depot. Tucker Street closed in 1963 under the Beeching cuts, which closed the Yatton to Witham line to passengers. Goods traffic to Wells ceased in 1964. Southern Railway West Country class steam locomotive no 34092 was named City of Wells at a ceremony at Priory Road station in 1949. It was used to haul the Golden Arrow service between London and Dover. It was withdrawn from service in 1964, and rescued from a scrapyard in 1971, and as August 2021 was operational on the East Lancashire Railway.Meet the Locomotives East Lancashire Railway
During World War II, Stoberry Park in Wells was the location of a prisoner-of-war camp, housing Italian prisoners from the Western Desert Campaign, and later German prisoners after the Battle of Normandy. Penleigh Camp on the Wookey Hole Road was a German working camp.
Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Wells, at parish (city) and unitary authority level: Wells City Council and Somerset Council. The city council is based at Wells Town Hall in the Market Place. The Town Hall was built in 1778. The building also houses the Magistrates' Court and other offices. It was formerly also one of the venues for the Somerset county assizes, which last sat here in October 1970. The assizes were abolished under the Courts Act 1971.
For national elections, the city forms part of the Wells and Mendip Hills constituency.
Administrative history There were two ancient parishes with their parish churches in Wells: Wells St Andrew, which covered a relatively small area around the cathedral (which is dedicated to St Andrew) and was sometimes described as a liberty,Vision of Britain Wells St Andrew CP and Wells St Cuthbert, which encircled St Andrew's parish and covered the rest of the city plus an extensive surrounding rural area. The city was also an ancient borough, with the borough boundaries covering the more built-up part of St Cuthbert's parish and the whole of St Andrew's parish. The borough's earliest known municipal charter dated from 1201. The borough was reformed to become a municipal borough in 1836 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which standardised how most boroughs operated across the country.
Parish functions under the poor laws were exercised separately for the parts of St Cuthbert's parish inside and outside the borough boundaries. The legal definition of 'parish' was changed in 1866 to be the areas used for administering the poor laws, and so the old St Cuthbert's parish became the two civil parishes of St Cuthbert In and St Cuthbert Out. The borough then comprised the two civil parishes of St Andrew and St Cuthbert In until 1933, when they were merged into a single civil parish of Wells matching the borough.Vision of Britain Wells CP
The borough of Wells was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. The area then became part of the new Mendip District. A successor parish called Wells covering the former borough was created as part of the 1974 reforms. The city status formerly held by the borough was transferred to the new parish, allowing the parish council to take the title Wells City Council.
Mendip district was abolished in 2023. Somerset County Council then took over district-level functions across its area, making it a unitary authority, and was renamed Somerset Council.
The Wells city arms show an ash tree surrounded by three water wells, crested with a gold mural crown, with the Latin motto Hoc fonte derivata copia (translated: "the fullness that springs from this well").
The council formalised twinning links with Paray-le-Monial, France, and Bad Dürkheim, Germany in 1979, then added Fontanellato, Italy in 1983; the Wells Twinning Association and the Mayor of Wells organise the twinning activities.
, Mary Bignal-Rand, Danny Nightingale, The Rifles and the late Harry Patch have the Freedom of the City. The Somerset Light Infantry received the freedom of the City of Wells following their return from Cyprus in 1956.
City status
As the seat of an ancient cathedral and diocese, Wells is historically regarded as a city. City status was most recently confirmed by Queen Elizabeth II by letters patent dated 1 April 1974, which granted city status specifically to the civil parish. As the designation is typically awarded to a local council area, this administrative area is then considered to be the formal boundary of the city, including its urban and rural extents. Wells, due to its urban area and wider parish sizes, is near-smallest city on several measures based on 2011 statistics: