Sherborne Abbey

Great parish church and former abbey, famed for one of Britain's finest fan-vaulted ceilings.

Sherborne Abbey is the reason the town feels larger than it is. The church began as a Saxon cathedral and later became a Benedictine abbey, but the present building is most striking for its Perpendicular Gothic stonework.

Look up as soon as you enter. The nave vault is a rich fan of pale stone, one of the finest in Britain, and it gives the interior a sense of lift that is hard to square with the abbey's heavy history.

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