In Search of the Division Bell
One overcast autumn morning we packed the car and headed north towards Ely, in search of the Division Bell. From our home in Suffolk it would take less than ninety minutes to reach the flat, wide-open space of the Fens from which the majestic Ely Cathedral rises like a giant light ship, marooned after the retreating waters.
For Pink Floyd’s penultimate studio album, the legendary designers Hipgnosis decided that Ely Cathedral would be the visual anchor for the sleeve. Two giant heads (or is it one?) were constructed and placed in a field, carefully aligned so that the Cathedral appeared in the space between them.
In total, four different versions of the cover were created – two with stone heads, and two with iron heads.
Where Was the Division Bell Album Cover Photo Taken?
The famous cover shot was staged in the Cambridgeshire Fens, in a field just outside Ely. The sculptures were built by artist Keith Breeden to a design by Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis. By positioning the heads so they appeared to be facing each other – with Ely Cathedral framed in the gap – the photograph captured both the monumental and the personal, a quiet English landscape reimagined as a stage for one of rock’s most enduring images.
The original “Division Bell” itself has nothing to do with Ely. That bell can be found in the Houses of Parliament, where its chimes once signalled Members of Parliament to vote.
What Does the Division Bell Mean?
The overarching theme of the album is communication – or the lack of it. Nick Mason described it as people making choices, “the yays or the nays.” Many listeners read it as a commentary on the fractured relationship between David Gilmour, Richard Wright, Nick Mason and their former bandmate Roger Waters.
Songs such as Poles Apart and High Hopes circle around distance, memory, and disconnection. The heads on the cover echo this idea: two faces locked in silent confrontation, yet also forming one.
A Day Trip in Search of a Sleeve
So there we were, driving round the flat, featureless landscape of the Fens trying to work out just where those heads had once stood. Despite much searching on Google Maps, we were none the wiser, instead distracted by evocative landscape names like the Hundred Foot Drain.
Why all this effort? One part of the quest was my own desire to be a musical tourist – to track down the place behind an iconic image. The Division Bell cover has been a favourite of mine since its release in 1994. I’ve owned it on CD, vinyl, postcards, and more recently a print from the Cambridge Wakes exhibition that now hangs on my wall.
The second part was more personal: an attempt to find meaning or answers in my own head for the challenges I faced at the time. Like my trip to Solsbury Hill earlier that same year, I hoped that standing in this landscape might help me make sense of my choices.
Coming Back to Life
In the end we didn’t find the correct field, nor did we capture the Cathedral rising from the Fens in quite the same way. I didn’t get the clarity I was searching for either.
But we came away with something else: time spent together, the making of a memory, and the knowledge that sometimes the journey matters more than the destination.