There was even a bit of quiet pleasure in the midst of these silent labours. In the south walk of the cloister, between the dormitory stairs and the refectory, was the warming house, the abbey fireside. Here, in the cold weather, the monks came to warm their hands. The abbot had a fire-place of his own; the cellarer had one in his office; and the infirmary and the guest houses were cheerfully warmed; but the common brotherhood had but this one hearth. Here was concentrated all the heat of the place, in the huge fire-places. One of these great openings is now blocked, having been disused before the suppression, when the number of monks was growing smaller, but the other is still ready for a load of logs, whose smoke would pour out of the tall chimney. Two large openings in the west wall gave some heat to the refectory. Here, in the warming house, in Advent, the brothers kept a “solemn banquet” of “figs and raisins, cakes and ale,” of whose celebration at Durham it is said that there was “no superfluity or excess, but a scholastical and moderate congratulation amongst themselves.” A door in the south-west corner opened upon a little court; the woodhouse stood in the eastern part of it, and a wooden bridge, from the refectory corner, led across the river. Over this bridge came the stout brothers in their gowns of brown or white, their arms full of wood. At Durham, near the warming house, there was a garden and a bowling alley. The muniment room at Studley Royal contains among its treasures a [Illustration: _Fountains Abbey._ _From the South West._ _Photo. Frith._ _Art Repro. Co.] book of accounts of the bursar, kept in the time of Abbot Grenewell (1442-1471). There it appears that they had “a pair of clavichords” at the Abbey--the pianoforte of the Middle Ages. This would seem to imply domestic music. Somebody must have played, while the brethren stood about and sang. There are also various records of fees paid to persons who went about the country from abbey to castle, from manor-house to market-square, for the entertainment of their neighbours. Minstrels came from Beverley, with those of Lord Arundell, of Lord Beaumont, of Lord Fitzhugh, even of the King; who not only sang but acted as conjurers, gymnasts, contortionists, and variety showmen. Sometimes the audience of the Abbey was given to a story-teller--_fabulator_--“the story-teller of the Earl of Salisbury”; with selections from the Hundred Merry Tales or the _Gesta Romanorum_. Players came from Thirsk and Ripon. Sometimes the entertainer was a jester, or, as they said, a fool. One of the bursar’s items shows a payment of fourpence “to a fool called Solomon (who came again).” These diversions would perhaps be given on the cellarer’s terrace; that is, in the space to the west of the cellarium, which was once enclosed within a wall, from the church porch to the cellarer’s office.