The concept of a gated community is not a new one. There may have been a growth of them since the 1980s, with developers wanting to present a sense of sanctitude from urban threats with clusters of homes behind security barriers or locked concierges, but they go back in idea much further than even the fenced-off Georgian squares of London. In Wells, Somerset, one of Europe’s finest medieval streets is an example of a gated community that was built over 600 years ago, and now they are fundraising for important architectural restoration and a subtle new way to open the place and history up to the public.

The integral relationship of the choir to the Cathedral has been important since the mid-12th century, with Vicars Close offering accommodation for the choir since 1363. A parallel run of small, terraced one-up-one-down cottages, the street offered a direct path to the Cathedral itself – a commute singers would need to take seven to eight times a day for rehearsals and services. Designed partly as communal living, there were no kitchens in the homes as the singers had shared meals as part of their work for the church – there were, however, inside toilets. It is the plan that two of these interiors will be opened to the public as part of the visitor experience of the Cathedral and town, with new interpretation planned that not only explains the Close architecturally, but also through its specific design in the service and development of choral music.





Vicars’ Close has been altered architecturally many times over the centuries. Originally, a compressed dirt road running across the entire width of the close, with gardens added in the 1400s, at the same time as a chapel and tower were added at each end of the street. Other changes include the octagonal ashlar chimneys having grown in height, a number of properties being knocked-through into larger abodes following the reformation and allowance of clergy to have wives and families, through to an overhaul and internal reconfiguration some of the houses over the Victorian period and unfortunate works carried out in the 1970s and 80s which saw a cement render applied, leading to several defects which will be repaired through the upcoming works.

In the mid 1300s, the choir had become unruly. Perhaps more akin to modern-day rock musicians than religiously-motivated, harmonising singers, the young men who formed the choir had a been frequenting local prostitutes and developing a reputation for debauchery. The solution was to turn their street into a gated community that protected them from external distractions, constructing a new extension to the cathedral to directly connect the choir’s places of living and work – a journey that visitors will be able to trace themselves once funds are raised and works complete.




Still populated by the Cathedral’s choristers, Vicars Close is recognised as being the oldest continuously occupied street in Europe, though while it may appear to be idyllic perfection on the outside, structurally and architecturally it has decayed into a somewhat chaotic mess. The task to analyse, repair, and conserve the 30 homes and connected buildings is one for b2architects and Integral Engineering Design, both companies with working experiences in both historic and ecclesiastical architecture. The Wells project has been a delicate one to get to this stage, requiring careful long-term planning not only with the Cathedral but also heritage bodies including Historic England, the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Georgian Group, and the Victorian Society.

The works will cost around £7m, of which £4.4m has been pledged form the National Lottery Heritage Fund and £1m from Cathedral donors, will see three of the homes opened up to the public. Number 27 will become a visitors’ centre, while two others will be opened up for general public access – Number 22 with its largely unaltered medieval structure and arrangement of rooms, and Number 12 as an example of the post-Reformation connection of two homes into a larger, family-oriented property.




Interpretation and the story presented to the public is being carried out by Thread, a Somerset architecture firm who also specialise in visitor interpretation. Here, they are working with composer and sound designer Joseph Buckler to create an experience focused on choral music, in both how Vicars Close was designed to support the needs of the altos, tenors, and basses as well as how the development and changes of choral music over the years can map itself onto spaces along the visitor’s route from the Close into the depths of the Cathedral.

It will become a gentle intervention, more reliant on spatial sound technology and an aural story more than one based on audio guides and wall-mounted panels of text. It promises to be an intriguing – if complicated – story of architecture and music to convey, but if it all works could offer a nuanced way of reading the place and the function of the buildings from the Middle Ages to today.




Once complete, the visitor will be able to track the path from where the choir lived, crossing the bridge direct into the Cathedral – a sequence of architectural spaces that is surely one of the richest to experience in the world. After crossing the narrow threshold across the road between Vicars Close and Cathedral – which incorporates the chorister’s shared dining room – the grandness of Wells Cathedral Chapter House is revealed. Completed by 1306, it is where the governing body met daily to organise Cathedral business, it has a vaulted ceiling of 32 tiercerons springing from a central column.

Leading down into the Cathedral are the Chapter Steps. Dating from the late 13th century, the steps found fame after a photography by Frederick Evans taken in 1903, considered one of the greatest images of the period and seminal in the history of architectural photography, marking a moment when images of buildings became more than factual replication and took on a poetic or symbolic reading of place. Evans himself said of the image, which came to be titled Sea of Steps: “ The passing over them of hundreds of footsteps during the many years the stair has served its purpose have worn them into a semblance of broken waves, low-beating on a placid shore.” It is said that so many camera-clubs visited to take images to match Evans’ original that three indentations were made in the floor to indicate where to position a tripod.



Having descended the Sea of Steps, visitors find themselves in the heart of Wells Cathedral, and with any luck the organ may be playing upon arrival. The instrument itself is subject to another fundraising appeal, looking for £2m to restore and improve the organ. While creating an impressive noise as it reverberates around English Gothic Cathedral, it is only partially working: the keyboard sticks, many of the stops are not available, the pipes leak air, and there is a real risk the entire instrument may fail altogether. The plan is to remove all 5,000 pipes and entirely overhaul the console, bringing the sound and scale of the organ back, and enabling it to support the entire repertoire of choral music the Cathedral has witnessed and supported.

The Vicars Close Project is now seeking to raise the remaining £1.6m needed for its restoration project. Once it is complete it will offer a unique and fascinating heritage journey from the interior of tiny medieval apartments to the magnificence of the enormous Cathedral nave, and from the delicate sounds of solo rehearsing and spaces of composition to the depth and resonance of a full choir backed by a renovated organ. It would become a sequence not only about the architecture and aural history of the place, but how the two have gone hand in hand over centuries.