Wells Cathedral is well known as the finest example of pure English Gothic architecture but less well known are some of the stories of greed, power and religious controversy which have helped shape its past. In The People Who Made Wells Cathedral, More than Stone & Glass we meet the men and women whose stories are interwoven with that of the great building. We learn about the Bishop who went on Crusade, the one who refused a bed for Nell Gwynne and the terribly unlucky incumbent crushed to death beneath his own chimneys.
We meet one Dean who started Wells impressive library and another who inadvertently scraped away the Cathedral's irreplaceable medieval wall paintings, not to mention a certain Dean Thomas Cromwell who found Wells a highly lucrative source for royal funds. There are tales of Master Masons and of how the Scissor arches might never have been built. All this is described in vivid terms as Wells contends with the Norman Conquest, the Wars of the Roses, the Black Death, Monmouth's Rebellion and attacks on the fabric of the Cathedral during the Reformation and in the time of Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth. The People Who Made Wells Cathedral, More than Stone & Glass is a glorious and fascinating journey through more than a thousand years of history, illustrated with some of the finest photographs ever taken of the building and will be thoroughly enjoyed by the serious historian and the casual reader alike.