Wells Cathedral, but ‘We Had a Very Listed Building Control
WELLS 01 PROJECT ARCHITECT: CATHEDRAL Martin Stancliffe, New entry cloister, Education and Music Purcell Miller Tritton Resource Centre, chapter house CATHEDRAL ARCHITECT: undercroft, works yard Peter Bird In some ways, the great medieval cathedrals are dinosaurs: creations of another era, fascinating, impressive and inspiring – but ill-equipped for the demands of the twenty-first century. Yet their continued significance is not to be doubted. Wells attracts some 470,000 visitors a year,170,000 of whom attend one of the 1,730 services, concerts, educational visits and other events organised by the cathedral. That’s almost five events a day, each with its own logistical demands, each attracting a different public. So it is easy to understand why the chapter at Wells had, by the late 1990s, begun to feel as if they were reaching a kind of evolutionary crossroads. There was no safe accommodation for visiting school groups, no disabled access to many areas of the cathedral church itself, and no covered route to the visitors’ toilets. The cathedral shop and restaurant occupied one walk of the medieval cloister; part of the Song School filled another. Girl choristers practised in the chapter house undercroft, which had otherwise become a large storeroom; choirs of both sexes robed here, too. Child protection legislation and the Disability Discrimination Act increased the imperative for change. The status quo was untenable. It took some time for the right solution to emerge. The first scheme was opposed by several consultees. It took all the negotiation skills of the cathedral authorities and planning advisors, including English Heritage and the CFCE, to arrive at the eventual answer – a design which balanced the building’s extraordinary significance with the needs of modern users and which was capable of attracting consent and funding.
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