THE CLOISTER AND ITS BUILDINGS
§ 46. The cloister (_claustrum_) was, as its name implies, an
enclosed space, surrounding all four sides of a rectangular court.
The four walks of the cloister were roofed in: the walls next the
court were pierced at first with open arcades, and later with large
window-openings. One walk adjoined the nave of the church, and part of
the east walk was overlapped by the adjacent transept. On the east and
the two remaining sides of the cloister were the buildings necessary to
the daily life of the convent, the chapter-house being invariably at
the back of the east walk and the refectory or frater at the back of
the walk opposite the church. The entrance from the outer court varied
in position according to the site of the monastery: in many houses, as
at Torre, it was a passage through or at one end of the western range,
but at Durham, Worcester and some of the larger Benedictine houses
it was a vaulted entry at the end of the east walk furthest from the
church. There were, as we have seen, two doorways from the church, of
which the eastern was the ordinary entrance used by the convent in the
daytime. The Sunday procession left the church by this doorway, and
passed along the east walk; and, after visiting the chief buildings on
three sides of the cloister, returned into church by the doorway at the
end of the west walk.
[Illustration: Fig. 6. Gloucester: south walk of cloister with monks'
carrels.]
§ 47. In all monasteries, save in those of the Carthusian order, the
walk next the church was the ordinary place where the convent spent the
hours of the day allotted to study and contemplation. For this reason
the cloister was normally planned on the south, the sunnier side of the
church, where the high walls of nave and transept checked the north and
east winds. This walk, which was omitted from the route of the Sunday
procession, was sometimes enclosed at either end by screens. In early
times the brethren seem to have sat side by side on the stone benches
which, as at Worcester, were set against the church wall between the
buttresses. But at a later date the part of the walk next the court was
divided by short partition walls into a number of small studies called
carrels (_caroli_, i.e. enclosed spaces). At Durham, where the walk was
ten bays long and was lighted by ten three-light windows, there were
thirty carrels, three to each window. The carrels remain at Gloucester,
twenty in number, two to each of the ten four-light windows. They were
roofed at the level of the window-transoms, so that the upper portions
of the windows gave plenty of light to the walk behind. Each contained
a desk for books: at Durham they were wainscoted, and entered by doors,
the tops of which were pierced, so that each monk as he worked was
under survey. As private property was forbidden, no religious was
allowed to keep books of his own in his carrel. Manuscripts in use were
kept in special cupboards or almeries (_armaria_), which at Durham were
ranged against the church wall. Such book-cupboards were placed in the
cloister where there was room for them. At Worcester there are two in
the east walk near the chapter-house door, while at Gloucester the
easternmost carrel and two small cupboards projecting into the court
from the east walk were probably used for this purpose. In Cistercian
houses a special place was set aside for the library; but in the houses
of most orders no definite part of the plan was so distinguished, and
it is not until a late date that, at Canterbury and Durham, we hear of
separate rooms assigned to the library, as distinct from the cupboards
and presses in the cloister[7].
§ 48. In the ordinary Benedictine plan, which, although subject to
some variation, was the model, founded on convenience, for the other
monastic orders, the eastern range of buildings had a ground-floor and
upper story, and projected some distance to the south or north, as the
case might be, beyond the cloister. The upper story was the dorter
(_dormitorium_) of the convent, which normally was carried through the
whole range as far as the transept of the church. On the ground-floor,
the chapter-house, entered by a doorway near the middle of the east
walk, was a long building which projected eastwards at right angles
to the range. It was very frequently separated from the church, as
at Durham and Worcester, by a vaulted passage which gave access to
the graveyard at the east end of the church. This was the parlour
(_locutorium_), where the rule of silence was relaxed and necessary
conversation could be held. At Durham, merchants were allowed to bring
their wares here for sale, but for this purpose an outer parlour was
often provided, as at Gloucester, in the western range, and the eastern
parlour was reserved for the convent. Occasionally, as at Rochester and
Wenlock, the chapter-house joined the church without the intervening
parlour; and at Westminster the place of the parlour was taken by the
chapel of St Faith, the only entrance to which was from the south
transept.
§ 49. The chapter-house (_domus capitularis_) was the place where,
every day after prime, the convent met together for the confession and
correction of faults and for the discussion of business concerning the
house as a whole. At these meetings a chapter (_capitulum_) of the
rule was read daily, and from this circumstance the name of chapter
was transferred both to the meeting and the building. Here too the
visitor of the monastery held his periodical inquiries, prefaced by a
sermon from one of his clerks or of the senior members of the house. In
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as at Durham and Fountains, the
chapter-house was the customary burial-place for abbots and other heads
of houses. The dead bodies of monks rested in the chapter-house at
Durham, and matins of the dead were sung for them here before they took
their last journey through the parlour to the graveyard. The building
was normally oblong in shape, undivided by columns into aisles, and was
usually vaulted. At Durham, Gloucester and Reading it ended in an apse.
The abbot or prior occupied a raised seat at the east end, with the
principal officers on his right and left. The rest of the convent sat
on stone benches round the walls; while near the centre of the floor
was the desk or lectern (_analogium_) from which the daily lection from
the martyrology and the chapter for the day were read. The breadth of
the chapter-house generally corresponded to three bays of the cloister,
with a doorway in the middle of the west wall and a window on either
side.
[Illustration: Fig. 7. Bristol: chapter-house, looking W.]
§ 50. In most houses, as in the Augustinian abbey of canons at
Haughmond and of canonesses at Lacock, the chapter-house roof was on a
level with that of the cloister, to allow of the continuation of the
dorter or of a passage from the dorter to the transept across its
western end. But in the larger houses, especially of the Benedictines,
it was often an aisleless hall occupying the whole height of the range.
Where, as at Canterbury, Gloucester and Reading, it was of this type
and opened directly from the cloister, the dorter was obviously shut
off from direct communication with the church. But at Bristol, Chester,
Westminster and elsewhere, the lofty chapter-houses stood entirely
at the back of the eastern range, and the dorter was carried across
a vaulted vestibule, which was divided by columns into three or, at
Westminster, into two alleys, and was either open to the cloister,
as at Bristol, or, as at Chester, was entered by a doorway with a
window on either side, like the doorway of the chapter-house beyond.
It has been said that the chapter-house was usually planned without
aisles: this was the case in the larger Benedictine houses, and in
such houses of moderate size as Haughmond, the Premonstratensian abbey
of Dryburgh in Scotland, or the Benedictine nunnery of St Radegund at
Cambridge. But the Cistercian order preferred chapter-houses divided
into alleys by rows of columns, and the influence of their beautiful
buildings may be seen in the aisled chapter-houses of Lacock or of the
Premonstratensian abbey of Beeleigh. Nor was the chapter-house always
oblong. Apsidal examples have been given; and, when that at Gloucester
was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, it was finished with a
three-sided apse. There are also circular and polygonal chapter-houses.
At Worcester the twelfth-century chapter-house is a circular building,
entered directly from the cloister, and vaulted from a central
column. In the fifteenth century, when the abutments shewed signs of
giving way, it was remodelled externally into a ten-sided polygon.
No vestibule was necessary here, as the dorter was placed in another
part of the cloister, and more room could accordingly be given to the
chapter-house. At Dore, the chapter-house was polygonal; at Margam
it was internally circular, externally twelve-sided. The Benedictine
chapter-house at Evesham was ten-sided. Between 1245 and 1250 was
built the octagonal chapter-house of Westminster, the prototype of the
secular buildings at Salisbury and Wells, raised upon an undercroft and
divided from the cloister by a long vestibule; and there was another
octagonal chapter-house in the Augustinian priory of Carlisle. The
most peculiar plan was that of the twelfth-century Premonstratensian
chapter-house at Alnwick, where a rectangular western vestibule was
combined with a circular eastern portion of the same height, roofed in
one span without a central column.
§ 51. Where the infirmary buildings stood due east of the cloister,
as at Canterbury, they were approached by a passage through the east
range, next the chapter-house. Their position, however, was variable;
and in such instances the infirmary passage represented a bay cut
off from the vaulted undercroft of the dorter, which formed the rest
of the ground-floor of the eastern range. At Westminster, where this
sub-vault belongs to the earliest portion of the monastery, the
ordinary custom was followed of dividing it into two apartments. The
northern and smaller, occupying the two bays at the south end of the
east walk, was the treasury, known at Westminster as the chapel of
the Pyx, because the currency, contained in a box or casket (_pyxis_)
was brought there for trial. The southern division extended for five
bays beyond the cloister, and was the common house or warming-house
(_calefactorium_), which contained the fireplace where the monks
warmed themselves in winter. In Cluniac monasteries this was also the
bleeding-house of the monks. If, however, the Westminster arrangement
may be quoted as typical, it was not invariable. The customary position
for the warming-house was beneath the dorter; and consequently, if
the dorter, as sometimes happened, occupied an abnormal situation,
the warming-house followed suit. Thus, on the contracted site at
Gloucester, the dorter was on the first floor of a building at right
angles to the cloister, parallel to the chapter-house. At Worcester,
it was at right angles to the west walk of the cloister. Probably the
early plan at Durham was like that at Westminster, but eventually the
dorter and common house were removed to the west range. The plan of
St Agatha's, which in more than one respect resembles that of Durham,
also shews the dorter and common house in the west range; but, while
the treasury at Durham was the part of the dorter sub-vault between the
common house and the church, the treasury at St Agatha's, as in many
canons' houses, was probably the sacristy in the east range, between
the church and chapter-house, where at Durham we find the parlour. The
dorter and common house at Canterbury were in the usual place; but the
treasury was in quite a different part of the monastery, between the
infirmary and one of the chapels of the apse; and at Gloucester, at
any rate after the fourteenth century, the treasury was a first-floor
room above the monks' parlour, between the chapter-house and north
transept[8].
§ 52. The dorter generally communicated with the transept of the
church by the night-stair, of which a splendid example remains at
Hexham, the head of the stair being divided from the dorter by a
lobby or a room over the parlour. Even where, as at Haughmond, the
dorter did not extend over the chapter-house, there was sometimes
a passage or gallery which led from it to the transept. There was
always a day-stair to the dorter from the cloister, the ordinary
position for which, as at Westminster, was between the chapter-house
or its vestibule and the treasury or the common house; and when, as
in examples already cited, the chapter-house entirely cut off the
dorter from the church, this stair would be used for the night-services
as well as for ordinary access in the daytime. In such cases, the
entrance to the church was through the eastern processional doorway,
but at Canterbury the monks, on their way from the dorter to the
night-service, passed through a gallery on the first floor of the
eastern or infirmary cloister to the doorway in the north-eastern
transept. In smaller monasteries there was often some difficulty in
fitting the day-stair into the plan of the eastern range. In the
Premonstratensian house of St Radegund the day-stair was a straight
flight of steps from the lobby between the dorter and the church wall,
at the other end of which was a turret containing the night-stair. At
Lacock there was a single stair next the church, parallel with the east
walk and dividing it from the large sacristy which filled the space
between the church and chapter-house.
§ 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.
§ 54. In the monasteries of all orders, the Cistercian order alone
excepted, the range of buildings opposite the church, uniting the
eastern and western cloister-buildings, had its major axis parallel
with that of the church, and was entered by a doorway from the cloister
near its west end. There was often at its east end a vaulted passage
through the range, which continued the east walk of the cloister, and
led either, as at Durham, into the outer court, or, as at Gloucester
and Peterborough, to the infirmary buildings, and from this passage
or 'dark cloister' at Westminster the common house beneath the dorter
was entered. The larger part of the range was devoted to the frater or
dining-hall of the monastery (_refectorium_). In several cases, the
frater was raised upon a cellar, which was in many such instances, as
at Gloucester, the great cellar and buttery of the house. Where such
cellars existed, a stair led up through the frater doorway to the
west end of the hall, which, as in ordinary houses, was partitioned
off from the rest by screens. The screens, entered on the level where
there was no cellar, formed a passage to the kitchen at the back of
the range, and had a pantry on the west side. This passage existed at
Durham and St Agatha's, where, above the pantry, the roof of which
was of course on a much lower level than that of the hall, there
was a loft, used in later days at Durham for the daily meals of the
monks, who used the frater only on certain festivals, leaving it to
the novices on ordinary days. The frater itself was an aisleless hall
with a wooden roof. Across the east end was the high table for the
principal members of the convent: the others sat at two or more tables
set lengthways in the body of the hall. Near the high table, in the
wall opposite the cloister, was the pulpit, from which a portion of
Scripture or of some homily in Latin was read by one of the brethren
during meals. A window-recess was generally enlarged to form the
pulpit, the floor and parapet of which were corbelled out towards the
hall: it was entered by a stair, as at Chester or in the beautiful
Cistercian example at Beaulieu, in the thickness of the wall, with an
open arcade in its inner face. There were also cupboards and shelves in
the frater for plate, linen and earthenware. In the Cistercian abbey
of Cleeve there remains above the high table a mural painting of the
Crucifixion: a similar painting was made in 1518 at Durham upon the
upper part of the west wall. At Worcester a sculptured figure of our
Lord in majesty occupies the middle of the east wall.
§ 55. The kitchen was, as has been said, external to the cloister,
though necessarily in close connexion with the frater. In some of
the greater houses, as at Canterbury, Durham and Glastonbury, it was
a detached building, which was rebuilt in the fourteenth century on
a square plan, with fireplaces in the angles, the arches of which
supported an octagonal superstructure and vaulted roof, the smoke being
conveyed through flues to a central louvre. A passage connected the
kitchen with the frater and screens, and at Durham food was served
through an opening in the frater wall called the dresser window. The
great kitchens of Durham and Glastonbury are still entire. In the
majority of cases, the kitchen was probably a rectangular building;
and sometimes, as at Lacock, it stood west of the frater, in the angle
between it and the western range. Here, where the frater was upon an
upper floor, the lobby at the foot of the stair was the entrance to the
kitchen, and the fireplaces were in the outer walls.
[Illustration: Fig. 8. Worcester: lavatory in west walk of cloister.]
§ 56. In the cloister, near the entrance to the frater, was the
lavatory (_lavatorium_), where the brethren washed their hands
before meals. In some cases, as at Durham and Wenlock, an octagonal
or circular building, projecting into the cloister-garth opposite
the frater doorway, contained a great laver, filled by taps from a
pipe in a central pillar. Each monk could wash at his separate tap,
the water from which fell into a basin at the foot of the laver
and was carried away by a waste-pipe. The ingeniously contrived
water-supply at Canterbury served three such laver-houses and a fourth
laver in the so-called north hall[9]. The great laver-house in the
infirmary cloister was used by monks on their way from the dorter to
the night-office, when they entered the church through the eastern
transept: this still remains, as well as the arches and the base of
the trough of that near the frater. At Wenlock there remains a small
apartment in the west wall of the south transept, close to the eastern
processional doorway from the cloister, which contained a lavatory
for use before the night-office: in this case, the lavatory evidently
followed the more usual arrangement and was not an isolated laver, but
a trough fed by a horizontal pipe in the wall behind and emptied by a
waste-pipe at one end. This is the form of which traces most commonly
remain in cloisters, where the lavatory and its towel-cupboards were
placed in arched recesses either, as at Peterborough or in several
Cistercian houses, in the wall of the frater, or, as at Worcester,
Haughmond and Hexham, in the wall of the western range, not far
from the frater doorway. The lavatory at Gloucester, on the trough
principle, remains within a rectangular building projecting from the
wall opposite the frater into the cloister-garth: the towel-cupboard
was in the north wall of the cloister next the frater. Towel-cupboards
also were formed by recesses in similar positions in the south wall at
Durham[10].
§ 57. The ground-floor of the western range of buildings, as at
Canterbury, Chester and Peterborough, was usually the cellarer's
building (_cellarium_), containing the great cellar and buttery of
the monastery, and frequently divided from the church by a vaulted
passage, which was the main entrance to the cloister from the _curia_
and was the outer parlour, where necessary business could be done
with lay-folk. But the variable position of the _curia_ with regard
to the cloister made the use of this range liable to variation; and
sometimes, as we have seen, the great cellar was a vault beneath the
frater. In two convents of women, the Benedictine house of St Radegund
at Cambridge and the Augustinian house at Lacock, the ground-floor was
divided into separate rooms. The outer parlour at Lacock was a passage
near the centre of the range: the rooms next the church may have been
used by the chaplains of the convent, while a large room north of
the passage may have been the guest-hall where inferior visitors or
pilgrims were entertained by the cellaress. The upper floor probably
contained the abbess' lodging or _camera_, with her guest-hall, in
which visitors of the better class were accommodated, above the
cellaress' hall. It was at any rate a very general custom, save in
Cistercian monasteries, for the upper floor to form part of the abbot's
or prior's separate lodging, and to contain his guest-hall. Originally
the head of the house slept in the dorter with his brethren; but before
the end of the twelfth century he began to occupy separate rooms, which
in the larger monasteries developed into a house of some size. At
Peterborough the abbot's lodging, now the bishop's palace, consisted of
a separate block of buildings standing to the west of the _cellarium_,
and entered from the outer court through its own gatehouse. It was
joined to the _cellarium_ by a wing, on the upper floor of which was
the abbot's solar or great chamber; and this communicated with the
guest-hall on the first floor of the _cellarium_, between which and
the church, above the outer parlour, was the abbot's chapel. The older
abbot's lodging at Gloucester, afterwards appropriated to the prior,
and now used as the deanery, was also separated by a small court from
the cloister, and a wing next the church contained the abbot's chapel
above the outer parlour; but here there was no western cloister range,
and consequently the abbot's guest-hall was not within the claustral
buildings. The archbishop's palace at Canterbury occupied practically
the whole space west of the _cellarium_, with entrances to the cloister
at both ends: the _curia_ was on the north of the cloister, and the
outer parlour was a passage between the west end of the frater and the
cellarer's building.
§ 58. An important variation of plan in the western range occurs in
three prominent instances. In each case the peculiarity is determined
by the fact that a river forms the western boundary of the site, and
afforded special convenience for drainage, while in two cases, at
Durham and Worcester, the western range was on the side furthest from
the town houses near the monastery. (1) At Worcester the cellarage
was beneath the frater, and there was no western range parallel to
the cloister. The dorter, with the common house below, was at right
angles to the west walk of the cloister, and the rere-dorter was at
the further end of this building next the river. A passage between the
common house and the church led to the infirmary. (2) At Durham the
older dorter and common house seem to have been, as at Peterborough,
in the eastern range and its southward extension, next the
chapter-house. But in the thirteenth century a long range was built at
the back of the west walk. The great dorter occupied the whole of the
upper floor. Its southern end, which crossed the west end of the frater
range, was appropriated to the novices; and a stair into the cloister,
close to the church, at the northern end, served for day and night use
alike. The vaulted ground-floor next the cloister was divided into a
treasury next the church and a common house. In the bay at the junction
of the south and west walks a passage led through the range to the
infirmary, which, as at Worcester and for the same reasons, was on the
west side of the monastery. The bays beyond this contained the cellar
and buttery, now known as the crypt, with entrances at one end from the
infirmary and at the other from the cellarer's checker or office and
the kitchen buildings in the outer court. A part of the old eastern
range next the chapter-house was used as a prison for refractory monks,
while the place of the rest was taken by the prior's lodging, now
part of the deanery. (3) In the Premonstratensian house of St Agatha,
the dorter was on the first floor of the western range and extended
southwards, as at Durham, across the west end of the frater: its stair
descended to the cloister at the south end of the west walk, dividing
the common house and adjacent cellarage from the cellarer's guest-hall,
which formed the five southern bays of the dorter sub-vault. There
was, however, a large two-storied annexe west of the dorter, the
upper story of which seems to have been used for lodging guests of
the better class, while, of the three divisions of its ground-floor,
the middlemost and largest may have been occupied by their servants,
with a narrow cellar on the east, and a drain, crossed by transverse
arches, on the west side. The whole arrangement is quite exceptional
and was probably unique; but the plan of the dorter sub-vault, allowing
for some difference in use, bears a strong resemblance to the plan at
Durham.
[Illustration: Fig. 9. Durham: ceiling of dorter (now the chapter
library).]