If we retrace our way along Lanfranc's gloomy passage to the infirmary
cloister, where guests and invalid brethren took the air, and turn to
the left along the Dark Entry, by the ruins of the Lord Prior's
Lodging and Chequer House or Office, we emerge into the Green Court.
Here servants had their quarters, and at the great gate of the convent
received guests and pilgrims. Those of distinction they conducted to
Master Omer's, those of middle rank to Chillenden Chambers or the
vanished New Lodging; the common wayfarers ascended that lovely and
unique Norman staircase to the Great North Hall. These had to bring
their own bedding and cooking utensils, like the steerage passengers
in an emigrant ship; and their hall was kitchen, parlour, and bedroom
in one, so that its superb approach was no measure of the quality of
its accommodation. The cowl or habit of a monk would rarely be seen in
the Green Court. It belonged too much to the outside world and the
secular life.
Before we ourselves return to that outside world let us turn
southwards for a moment for a view that we shall not easily forget.
Below the immense mass and broken outlines of the church, and flanked
by ruins of cloister and dormitory, we see across a little breadth of
lawn the picturesque octagonal tower called the Baptistery. It was
really a monks' lavatory, and the centre of the water supply. For,
strange as it may be to our conceited modern ears, the monks had from
the twelfth century an elaborate system of waterworks, and probably
owed to this their comparatively small mortality during the
visitations of plague. There still exists a twelfth-century plan
showing the various pipes, tanks, and basins, for drinking, washing,
or cooking. So the little octagonal tower, as so often happens, was
useful as well as beautiful. And if the chart which indicates the path
of every pipe and runnel, and the place of every layer for personal
ablution, fails to indicate any laundry for the washing of
clothes--why, the monks wore all-wool garments, and did not think
fastidiousness a virtue. Let us hope for the best.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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