The title of this post is a bit misleading because it all depends on how you define a city. In actual fact, the City of London is smaller, both in size and population, but as it’s surrounded by another 9 million people and 600 square miles of urbanization, it hardly registers in people’s minds the same way as this small town in Somerset does.

Now that’s cleared that up, the next question is what constitutes somewhere being called a city? In Britain at least, it was traditionally a place that had a cathedral. I’ll refrain from delving deeper into why that’s no longer the case but keep to the script instead and try to explain why Wells has such a magnificent cathedral for such a small place.

For that I really need to go back to 705 AD when Ine, the King of Wessex, founded a minster church here dedicated to St Andrew. A couple of hundred years later it became the seat of the newly formed bishopric of Wells, but when the episcopal headquarters moved to Bath, the canons of Wells and the monks of Bath fell out, and it was only when it was agreed to rename the bishopric the Diocese of Bath and Wells that ecclesiastical order was restored: That was back in 1245, but today’s bishop is still known as the Bishop of Bath and Wells.

It may have come under joint administration, but when the cathedral was built during the first half of the 13^th century, Wells not only became a city, it also became the principle seat of the diocese, and so it remains.

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Originally posted 2025-09-16 16:32:35.