Plan No. 2 furninshes the iconography of the distinctly monastic buildings on a larger scale. The usually unvarying arrangement of the Cistercian houses allows us to accept this as a type of the monasteries of this order. The church is the chief feature. It consists of a vast nave of eleven bays, entered by a narthex, with a transept and short apsidal choir. (It may be remarked that the eastern limb in all unaltered Cistercian churches is remarkably short, and usually square.) To the east of each limb of the transept are two square chapels, divided according to Cistercian rule by solid walls. Nine radiating chapels, similarly divided, surround the apse. The stalls of the monks, forming the ritual choir, occupy the four eastern bays of the nave. There was a second range of stalls in the extreme western bays of the nave for the fratres conversi, or lay brothers. To the south of the church, so as to secure as much sun as possible, the cloister was invariably placed, except when local reasons forbade it. Round the cloister were ranged the buildings connected with the monks' daily life. The chapter-house always opened out of the east walk of the cloister in a line with the south transept. In Cistercian houses this was quadrangular, and was divided by pillars and arches into two or three aisles. Between it and the transept we find the sacristy, and a small book-room armariolum, where the brothers deposited the volumes borrowed from the library. On the other side of the chapter-house, to the south, is a passage communicating with the courts and buildings beyond. This was sometimes known as the parlour, colloquii locus, the monks having the privilege of conversation here. Here also, when discipline became relaxed, traders, who had the liberty of admission, were allowed to display their goods. Beyond this we often find the calefactorium or day-room--an apartment warmed by flues beneath the pavement, where the brethren, half frozen during the night offices, betook themselves after the conclusion of lauds, to gain a little warmth, grease their sandals and get themselves ready for the work of the day. In the plan before us this apartment opens from the south cloister walk, adjoining the refectory. The place usually assigned to it is occupied by the vaulted substructure of the dormitory. The dormitory, as a rule, was placed on the east side of the cloister, running over the calethetory and chapter-house, and joined the south transept, where a flight of steps admitted the brethren into the church for nocturnal services. Opening out of the dormitory was always the necessarium, planned with the greatest regard to health and cleanliness, a water-course invariably running from end to end. The refectory opens out of the south cloister at G. The position of the refectory is usually a marked point of difference between Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys. In the former, as at Canterbury, the refectory ran east and west parallel to the nave of the church, on the side of the cloister farthest removed from it. In the Cistercian monasturies, to keep the noise and smell of dinner still farther away from the sacred building, the refectory was built north and south, at right angles to the axis of the church. It was often divided, sometimes into two, sometimes, as here, into three aisles. Outside the refectory door, in the cloister, was the lavatory, where the monks washed their hands at dinner-time. The buildings belonging to the material life of the monks lay near the refectory, as far as possible from the church, to the S.W. With a distinct entrance from the outer court was the kitchen court, with its buttery, scullery and larder, and the important adjunct of a stream of running water. Farther to the west, projecting beyond the line of the west front of the church, were vast vaulted apartments, serving as cellars and storehouses, above which was the dormitory of the conversi. Detached from these, and separated entirely from the monastic buildings, were various workshops, which convenience repuired to be banished to the outer precincts, a saw-mill and oil-mill turned by water, and a currier's shop, where the sandals and leathern girdles of the monks were made and repaired.
This document is part of an article on the Abbey from the 1911 edition of an encyclopedia which is out of copyright here in the U.S. The article is in the public domain, and you may copy, download, print and distribute this work as you see fit.
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