English MonasteriesThompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
History
English Monasteries
Thompson, A. Hamilton (Alexander Hamilton)
Monasteries -- England
§ 64. The warming-house was a rectangular building, which at Fountains
is vaulted in four compartments from a middle pillar. The fireplace
was usually in a side-wall or, as at Waverley, in the further wall
from the cloister. Two huge fireplaces remain in the east wall at
Fountains, one of which has been blocked. At Tintern the fireplace was
a middle hearth, surrounded by open arches and connected by smaller
arches with the end walls. The outer wall was generally pierced by
a window and a doorway which led into a yard at the back. Here at
Fountains, against the west wall of the dorter sub-vault, was the
wood-house from which the fire was replenished. The west wall of the
warming-house was part of the east wall of the frater, and two openings
in it at Fountains may have been intended to give the frater some of
the benefit of the fire. The arrangements of the frater, of which
a perfect example, now used as a church, remains at Beaulieu, were
similar, allowing for the difference in plan, to those of Benedictine
and other houses, but were less elaborate. It was raised a step or two
above the cloister, and on one or both sides of the entrance were the
lavatory arches. The magnificent frater at Rievaulx had a sub-vault,
entered from the foot of the stair to the pulpit; but this is a rare
instance of a feature often found in Benedictine houses. At Fountains
the frater was divided by a row of columns into two alleys, each with
its separate wooden roof; but the undivided plan, as at Beaulieu, was
general.
§ 65. The position of the kitchen was so planned as to communicate
readily on one side with the monks' frater, which was served from it
through a turn-table in the wall, and the frater of the lay brothers
on the other, which was served at Fountains through a hatch in the
west wall. It had a doorway from the cloister, which brought it into
close connexion with the cellar and buttery in the western range; while
at the back a door opened into a yard, where fuel could be kept. The
fireplaces at Fountains and Kirkstall, where the kitchens were vaulted,
were placed back to back in the middle of the room. Kitchens of the
size of those at Durham or Glastonbury were unknown in Cistercian
houses, where, even after the relaxation of the ordinary simple diet,
meat was never cooked in the frater kitchen. The plan, which provided
for the simultaneous supply of two fraters when necessary, was more
compact and less secular in some of its features than the Benedictine
plan; while the actual admission of the kitchen into the cloister
buildings was made possible by the fact that the monks themselves
did their own work, instead of using hired servants under the
superintendence of the kitchener.
[Illustration: Fig. 12. Fountains abbey: _cellarium_, looking north.]
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