Fountains Abbey: The story of a mediæval monastery

by George Hodges

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.

One of Abbot Grenewell’s purchases was a great clock, made by John Ripley, and probably set in the south transept of the church. In the middle of the hot day in summer, after the service of sext, and late in the afternoon in winter, after nones, when the clock pointed to the proper hour, a bell in the cloister rang for dinner; either a bell or a board struck with a mallet. Outside the refectory door, on either hand, were stone troughs with running water from the river. In the middle of the cloister is a great stone bason. When that welcome sound was heard, the brothers washed their hands in the troughs or in the bason, wiping them on a roller towel which hung beside the door. Then they entered their noble dining-hall, lofty as a church, with ceiling of wood and floor of stone, wainscoted above the height of a man’s head, and having down the midst a row of marble pillars. At the end opposite the door, and along the wall on both sides, were stone benches, and in front of them were tables of oak, covered with linen cloth. The prior commonly presided, the abbot dining in his own lodgings. All stood in silence till the prior was in his place, and remained standing while he rang a little bell during a time sufficient for the saying of the fifty-first psalm. When the bell stopped, the priest of the week said grace, and they all sat down.

In the fair gallery of stone in the west wall, deeply recessed and lighted by great windows, reached by a short flight of stone steps, the reader stood to accompany the silent meal with words of Holy Scripture and of ancient authors. The kitchen adjoined the refectory on the west, having its great ovens in the middle of the room, and entered from the refectory by a service door which had a round revolving shelf across the middle of it. Between the door to the gallery and the door to the kitchen there was perhaps a sideboard; and in the corners toward the cloister were cupboards for cups and plates and spoons, each provided with a sink. There were forty-five silver spoons here when the inventory was made, but only three small cups or mazers, and one big one, of silver. This would appear to indicate that the cups and plates were of some cheap material and not worth counting.

The bill of fare showed bread and vegetables and fruit and fish. Sometimes there was meat, but this was cooked in the kitchen of the infirmary, and served in the misericord, or House of Merciful Meals. No flesh which had ever walked about upon four feet was dressed in the cloister kitchen or served in the cloister refectory. But fowls were eaten, and eggs were a staple of monastic diet. The monks had wine and beer for drink, according to the custom of the country. In the book of signs—De Signis—which shows how the monks of Ely indicated their wishes at the silent table, four gestures are set down to mean beer: signifying good beer, bona servisia, small beer, mediocris servisia, smaller beer, debilis servisia, and a very common beer called skagmen. In the “Mirroure of Our Ladye,” the sister of Sion House who desired an apple was directed to “put thy thumb in thy fist, and close thy hand, and move afore thee to and fro”; for milk, “draw thy left little finger in the manner of milking”; for mustard, “hold thy nose in the upper part of thy right fist, and rub it”; for salt, “philip with thy right thumb and his forefinger over the left thumb”; for wine, “move thy forefinger up and down upon the end of thy thumb before thine eye.” A dinner to the accompaniment of these cheerful communications, while one read aloud from a good book, may well have been a pleasant meal.

At Ely, during the week beginning August 5, 1336, the brethren of the monastery had on Sunday eggs, chickens, pigeons and dripping; on Monday, pottage and cod; on Tuesday, fresh meat and mutton; on Wednesday, fresh fish, white herring and cod; on Thursday, fresh meat, white herring and cod; on Friday, white herring and cod; and on Saturday, dripping, milk, white herring and cod.