Part of the Wells Street Names series.
Vicars' Close is a dead end street in Wells, Somerset. It is reportedly Europe's oldest residential street with the original buildings still intact. John Julius Norwich called it "that rarest of survivals, a planned street of the mid-14th century". It comprises numerous Grade I listed buildings, comprising 27 residences (originally 44), built for Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury, a chapel and library at the north end, and a hall at the south end, over an arched gate. It is connected at its southern end to Wells Cathedral by a walkway over Chain Gate.
The Close owes its origins to a grant of land and buildings by Walter de Hulle, a canon of Wells Cathedral, for the purpose of accommodating chantry priests; however, the land is likely to have been used for a long period before the construction of the close, as prehistoric flint flakes and Romano-British pottery shards were recovered from the garden of number four during work to construct an extension.
At the time church singers were referred to as "vicars choral". Bishop Jocelin of Wells styled the priests serving the cathedral as the Vicars Choral, in the 12th century, their duty being to chant divine service eight times a day. Previously they had lived throughout the town, and Bishop Ralph resolved to incorporate them and provide subsistence for the future. The Vicars Choral were assigned annuities from his lands and tenements in Congresbury and Wookey and an annual fee from the vicarage of Chew, and he endowed them with lands obtained from the Feoffees of Walter de Hulle. The residences he built became known as the College, or Close of the Vicars.