CHAPTER III

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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.