The guest-houses had the river on two sides, being set in a sharp angle of the stream. On the north a wall led from the river to the western guest-house, and was continued to the eastern, making two secluded courts. Close to the corner of the eastern house a door opened in the wall, through which the hospitaller led his guest into the inner court. There at his feet rose a great staircase which gave access to the second storey of that house. From the upper landing of these stairs a bridge led to the second storey of the other house.
The two houses may have been for the use of different classes of visitors, in a day when social distinctions were scrupulously drawn. In that case, the better people were probably lodged in the eastern house. There, entering the upper storey, they found their sleeping-rooms, with deep-set windows looking to the north and east; and with two good fire-places, one in the middle of the east wall, the other in the gable end to the north. In these rooms was never a bed, a table, a stool or a candlestick which had been made by a machine. All had come from the hands of craftsmen who brought to their labour a determining quality of personal interest. Descending into the courtyard, a door near the north end brought the guest into the great hall—“a goodly brave place much like unto a church”—where a central row of fair pillars upheld a vaulted roof. This was for the ceremonies of the table. The arrangement of the western guest-house was according to the same plan, with two differences: it was L-shaped, the letter being turned about so that the base lay by the river, while the shaft extended to the north; and the hall, which was in the base of the L, was divided into two rooms. The northern wing may have been the kitchen for both houses. A small building by the river, where the two guest-houses met, may have been the office of the hospitaller.
These houses were a hostelry, wherein decent wandering persons, “both noble, and gentle, and what degree soever that came thither as strangers,” were made welcome and given free entertainment. This was the Abbey inn, known to all instructed wayfarers. In a day when towns were far apart, and the roads bad and beset with peril, the sight of a monastery tower in the late afternoon was pleasant to a traveller’s eyes. In the guest-house hall he ate; in the guest-house chamber he slept; and on the following morning, after mass, refreshed and blessed, he went upon his way, thanking God for monks and monasteries.
II. THE CELLARIUM
The long range of building, extending from the church to the river, was called the cellarium, because it was under the general charge of the cellarer or steward of the monastery. It is likely that he had his office in the room which stands out from this building at the middle of its length. In this chamber, having a good window to the west, and a fireplace between two narrow windows to the south, he kept his office hours. St. Benedict himself, in his rule, had counselled all cellarers to be punctual in this matter, that nobody be kept waiting.
The great vaulted hall, now open from end to end, was then divided into five rooms by screens and partitions. The first room included the first two bays of the north end. Instead of pillars, it had in the midst two piers of masonry supporting a staircase, which ascended out of the church into the room above. These piers made this a double room, whereof the western half served as a vestibule to the church, while the eastern half, once opening from the cloister, may sometime have been the treasury, as at Durham.
The second room began at the southern pier and extended to the fourth pillar, thus including four bays. This was probably the storehouse for the domestic supplies of food and drink. A door in the west wall opened conveniently upon the outer court.
The third room was between the fourth pillar and the sixth. It had a door in its south wall, and appears to have been the buttery.
The wall which crossed at the sixth pillar ran between two doors, an outer door into the court and an inner door into the cloister. Thus this fourth room served as an entrance way. Its southern wall had the eighth pillar in the middle of it, and this bay beside the entrance may have been the outer parlour, the auditorium juxta coquinam, or room beside the kitchen, which was provided for in the Cistercian arrangements. Here in a niche of the east wall, now blocked, the porter sat beside the cloister door. In this room the brethren of the Abbey met their friends who lived in the world; here merchants came to show their wares.
All the rest of the hall, from the eighth pillar to the end over the river, was open then as it is now, and served as the refectory of the lay brothers. They came