English MonasteriesThompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
History
English Monasteries
Thompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
Monasteries -- England
§ 53. Wainscot partitions divided the dorter internally into a series
of cubicles with a passage down the centre. Each cubicle was lighted
by a window, and at Durham each contained a desk at which monks could
work, if, as for example at the mid-day _siesta_ in summer, they were
unable to go to sleep. This was the ordinary late arrangement: it is
probable that in early monasteries the beds stood against the wall
between the windows without any partitions. Although several monastic
dorters are still roofed, as at Westminster and Durham, where they
are in use as chapter libraries, at the Cistercian abbeys of Cleeve,
Ford (where the dorter is now divided into many small rooms) and Valle
Crucis, and at the Premonstratensian abbey of Beeleigh, the internal
partitions have disappeared. At the further end of the dorter or at
right angles to the further wall from the cloister, there was always
a building known as _domus necessaria_, _necessarium_, or in English
the rere-dorter, which was a long gallery with a row of seats against
one wall, each lighted by a window and divided by a partition from the
next. Beneath the seats was a drain or running stream, above which
the partitions were carried by transverse arches: on the ground-floor
the drain was shut off by a wall from the vaulted undercroft of the
gallery. The _necessarium_ at Canterbury, known as the third dorter,
was 145 feet long: it opened from the north-east corner of the great
dorter, and was at right angles to the east wall, parallel to the
second dorter, in which the obedientiaries or officers of the house
slept. It contained 55 seats at first, 50 later. At Lewes the later
_necessarium_, a separate building on lower ground than the dorter
and connected with it by a bridge and stair, was 158 feet long and
contained 66 seats. At Furness the _necessarium_ stood east of the
dorter and parallel to it, with a two-storied building connecting the
two. Here the seats were arranged back to back against a middle wall,
with a passage at either side.
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