JANUARY 2025 · ROAM
Wells Somerset
Somerset, England
England's smallest city. The cathedral gets the attention. I was more interested in what holds the rest of it together.
Wells is built in a local honey-coloured limestone that weathers unevenly — some surfaces staying pale, others staining dark where water runs. The slate roofs above them are a different colour altogether: grey-blue, the tiles irregular in a way machine-cut tiles aren't. Brick chimneys rise above both. Two images; that's the record from this visit.
A row of stone cottages: dark-framed windows, slate above, the stonework pointing maintained but not recent. The buildings are occupied, lived in, not preserved as display. The domestic detail — the specific pitch of the roofs, the way the window frames sit in the stone — is what makes a medieval city read as continuous habitation rather than museum.
The description ends there. Two frames is a thin archive.
I'll go back.
The domestic detail that makes a medieval city read as continuous habitation rather than museum.
Wells — January 2025
Weathered slate roof tiles and brick chimneys on historic stone buildings in Wells
Row of honey-coloured stone cottages with dark-framed windows and slate roofs, Wells Somerset