§ 78. Monasteries of other orders were generally content with a single outer court, although there is evidence, for example at Gloucester, of some of the offices being arranged round a smaller court entered from the _curia_[18]. The great gatehouse of the _curia_, of which many fine examples remain, was the main entrance to the monastery, and was usually a building with one or more upper floors and a vaulted passage or gate-hall on the ground-floor. In the earlier examples, as at Peterborough, the gateway was a single wide arch, as is also the case in the early fourteenth-century gatehouse at Kirkham. This gave entrance to carriages and foot-passengers alike. Later gatehouses were built on a larger scale, and the gate-hall was entered by a wide portal with a low doorway or postern at the side for pedestrians, as at Bridlington, Christchurch gate, Canterbury, Torre, and St Albans. On one side of the gate-hall was the porter's lodge. Occasionally, as at Peterborough, the chamber on the upper floor was used as a chapel. The finest of all existing English examples is the gatehouse at Thornton, remarkable for the barbican which gives it as important a place in military as in monastic architecture; but the Christchurch and St Augustine's gatehouses at Canterbury, and the two gatehouses at Bury St Edmunds are hardly second to it in interest and beauty. The southern and earlier gatehouse at Bury was the _porta coemeterii_ directly opposite the west front of the church, and is a square Norman tower, not unlike the great tower of a Norman castle: the northern gatehouse, built in the fourteenth century, was the entrance to the outer court of the monastery. Large monasteries were frequently provided with more than one outer gatehouse: thus the Christchurch gateway at Canterbury was the entrance to the cathedral and the part of the churchyard set apart for lay burials, while the main gatehouse was in the western wall of the outer court. Special entrances to the lay-folks' cemetery are also found at Gloucester and Rochester; while at Norwich, as at Bury, one of the two western gateways leads directly to the cathedral, while the other was the main entrance to the precinct. [Illustration: Fig. 15. Kirkham priory: gatehouse.]