Wells Cathedral: the Quire

I like English church choirs. Perhaps it's because they are always so colorful with their needlepointed cushions, as above, or with their banners, as in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Palace. Maybe it's because the pews face each other; in that respect, it's like the old-fashioned stations wagons where the seats faced the rear window. Well, for whatever reason, they're cool. Below is a view of the great organ.

These pictures rather duplicate each other, but the bottom one shows the lamps illuminated for evensong.

I liked the next picture, too. In all of these pictures, we are facing west.

Next is a picture looking from the choir into the adjacent aisle.

This lady is located at the bottom of the pulpit.

The next picture is really a shot of the crossing, where the nave and the transept intersect. If you were to line up the parts of a cathedral from west to east, you would have the westwork and its vestibule, followed by the nave, followed by the crossing, then the choir, and finally the Lady Chapel. If you compare this picture with the first one, you can see that the huge organ divides the crossing from the choir.

Here is a misericord. We actually had them under our seats in the choir when we attended Evensong. A misericord or mercy seat provided the aged monks or priests with a place to lean upon during long prayers when they were supposed to be standing. Often they're found beneath folding seats.

These are lovely needlepointed cushions. Flash photography is prohibited in the choir.

A side note on photography. For three pounds (about five dollars) you can get a sticker that allows you to take photographs in the church. I think that's a marvelous solution to raise money while still enabling visitors to take their own photographs. I wish the museums in the UK would adopt this policy.

Opposite the pulpit is the bishop's throne.

Below is a picture of the choir's tunnel vault with its decorative lierne ribbing. It differs from the vaulting used in the nave,

The choir walls look particularly Gothic to me. This part of the church is older than the nave.

A note about Evensong. The service started at 5:15 pm. There was a small parade of deacons, or choir masters, or baton-carriers--I really don't know--but the older men were very precise in their duties. One guy actually carried a baton, but he didn't use it to keep tempo to the music. However, twice he bowed to the altar and then to the guy next to him; I found the latter bow a little weird. The singers wore royal blue cassocks. There seemed to be three levels of singers. Little boys who had no alb, one of whom was so little I couldn't even see his eyes above the lectern. Next came the older boys with their ruffed collars, and finally, the men. I don't think they are supposed to look at the audience when they sing, but one of the littlest ones did look at me from time to time. I smiled back. He didn't seem to pour his heart out until they sang an athem set to the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Hurrahing in Harvest." The little kid really got into singing the louder measures. Later, a lector read the same poem, and quite magnificently, too. Bill was exceptionally pleased with their performance and claimed that Wells's evensong was even more beautiful than King's College's. It didn't hurt that this choir director had chosen a poem by a Jesuit priest to perform, either! Anyway, the picture below isn't very good, but it was the only one I dared to take of the performance.