Lower Weare

This is the oldest part of the cathedral - the stiff-leaf carvings on the capitals of the north-west side are simpler in design than those east of this point. The bishop’s seat or ‘cathedra’ is on the left.
An extract from from"Wells Photographic Memories".

WE BEGIN the tour of the city by the Dean’s Eye gate-house, the dropping-off point both for mod- ern tour coaches and ancient stagecoaches. Until about 1970, one-way traffic passed under this gate-house into Sadler Street, the main road from London and Bath to Exeter. The Dean’s Eye is also known as Browne’s gate, after a cobbler who lived alongside it in 1553. The east side of the street was developed after 1340, but some deeds for the west side date back as far as 1301. On the west side is the white Georgian façade of one of the earliest coaching inns: the Hart’s Head, known as the White Hart from 1700. It was built on dean and chapter land, and has been an inn since 1497. The site of the Hart’s Head first appears in the 1343 Commoner’s Accounts; it was bequeathed five years earlier in return for prayers for ‘the repose of the soul of Ralph de Lullington’.
An extract from from"Wells Photographic Memories".

The frontage of the Swan Hotel hides its 15th- and 16th-century origins. The window to the left of the swan on its plinth was once a doorway permitting passengers to walk into the hotel from the top of a stagecoach. The little garden was created in 1869. The Swan Hotel, first recorded in 1422 and rebuilt in the 16th century, hosted a feast in honour of Queen Anne of Denmark in 1613. The hotel has some theatrical costumes permanently on show on the ground floor; these were worn by the 19th-century actor Sir Henry (Brodribb) Irving. He was the first actor to receive a knighthood (1895).
An extract from from"Wells Photographic Memories".

The Old Priory Café, the gabled building on the left, now a picture gallery, has a 17th-century façade and a medieval jettied front with pargetting (plaster designs). The agricultural merchants B D Mogg & Sons (left) are still trading - their premises are now on the northern outskirts of the city. Sadler Street was subject to an enhancement scheme in 2001, and much of the asphalt road has been replaced by more picturesque material. Exploration of the uncharted territory beneath the street was also undertaken, as the ancient water and drainage pipes needed to be replaced.
An extract from from"Wells Photographic Memories".

In 1451, Bishop Bekynton commissioned his ‘New Works’, which included the Dean’s Eye, or Browne’s Gate, built in 1453, which connected the cathedral precinct with the city. The Dean’s Eye forms part of Nos 20 and 22 Sadler Street, once called the Mitre Inn, now known as the Ancient Gatehouse hotel and tea room and the Rugantino restaurant (a narrow, winding stone staircase inside the hotel leads to the room above the gateway, which is furnished with an antique carved four-poster bed). In the late 1690s there were about five inns in Sadler Street. The Mitre Inn had occupied three other sites here before vanishing by the late 19th century with the arrival of the temperance movement. Wells always had a large number of inns, and by 1900 there were still fifty inns in the city.
An extract from from"Wells Photographic Memories".