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The magnificent West Front (ca1230) of Wells Cathedral is 100 feet high and 150 feet wide. It rises in three distinct stages, each clearly defined by a horizontal course.

At the lowest level of the façade is a plain base, contrasting with and stabilising the ornate arcades that rise above it. Above the basement rise two storeys, ornamented with quatrefoils and niches originally holding about four hundred statues, with three hundred surviving until the mid-20th century. Many of the figures are life-sized or larger. The West Front contains one of the largest galleries of mediæval sculpture in the World. Starting in the lower niches with biblical scenes, it rises through kings, bishops and orders of angels to the twelve apostles with Christ over all.

The third stages of the flanking towers were both built in the Perpendicular style of the late 14th century; that on the north-west was not begun until about 1425.