Fountains Abbey: The story of a mediæval monastery

by George Hodges

When Abbot Grenewell went to attend the assizes at York, as he did in 1455, at the March session of the court, he dined the first day on fish alone; on the second day, having guests at his table, he added salt and mustard to the fish; on the third day, fish was served with figs, raisins and gingerbread; the fare of the fourth day was like that of the second, and the fifth day followed the third. With this were bread and beer and wine.

Monastic meals, though monotonous, were wholesome; and there was a good deal of variety in the preparation of the fish. St. Bernard, in his day, complained of the ingenuity with which eggs were cooked in religious houses. “Who can describe,” he cries, “in how many ways the very eggs are tossed and tormented, with what eager care they are turned over and under, made soft and hard, beaten up, fried, roasted, stuffed, now served minced with other things, and now by themselves! The very external appearance of the thing is cared for, so that the eye may be charmed as well as the palate.” As the monasteries increased in wealth, there would be a constant temptation to dine more abundantly. Eating is not only one of the earliest but one of the most universal of arts, and no cook nor convert could completely resist its allurements. For the most part, however, the abbey fare was fit food for soldiers, for men in training for a war with Satan.

Thus the silent meal progressed, the level voice of the reader at his desk in the gallery, accompanying the cheerful sounds of honest eating and drinking. No brother was permitted to leave until the meal was ended, nor walk about while his companions were eating. Neither was he allowed to wash his cup with his fingers, though he might wipe it with his hand. He was forbidden to wipe either his hands or his knife on the table-cloth,—until he had first cleansed them on his bread. When he helped himself to salt it must be with his knife; when he drank, he must hold the cup with both hands. “Eyes on your plates, hands on the table, ears to the reader, heart to God”: thus ran the rule. Then the prior rang a sharp note on his bell. If the great mazer of silver with a gilt band, which is mentioned in the inventory, was a grace cup, then it was at this moment that it went its round, each brother lifting it to his lips, holding its two handles. Then, two by two, they marched into the church and said the miserere psalm.

Out of the cloister, in the south-east corner, between the parlour and the day-stairs to the dormitory, a passage led to the buildings which lay beyond. The beginning of this passage crossed a long room which extended to the south, whose central line of pillars upheld the dormitory floor. The ceiling was low and the windows were at the south end, so that its use is not apparent. It may have been the chamber of the novices; it may have been the tool-house. It may have been an office or checker, wherein the master of the warming house kept his hogshead of wine, and his spices, figs and walnuts, with which to mitigate the austerities of Lent. Or the chamberlain may have used it, whose charge was to furnish the brethren with linsey-woolsey for their shirts and sheets; in which case, the tailor may have sat in the light of the south windows, mending frayed scapularies and darning holes in cowls and gowns.

The passage led into a gallery, with open arcading of stone on either side, and a second storey over. Out of the gallery, to the right, opened the abbot’s lodgings, where a long hall gave entrance into several rooms. Beside the door a stairway rose to the upper chambers, which appear to have been large and light, with comfortable fireplaces, and oriel windows looking out to east and south over the river. In one of these rooms, or in the misericord which was connected with this building by a hall, the abbot dined with visitors of state. Here, at the time of the inventory, were two gilded basins of silver, three silver ewers, eight “standing pieces” with covers, nine “flat pieces,” all of silver, with a goblet and some spoons: so that the abbot’s table must have presented a shining and sumptuous appearance. The open space bounded by the dormitory basement on the west, the arcaded passage on the north, the rere-dorter or necessarium on the south, and the abbot’s lodgings on the east, may have been the abbot’s garden, his hortus inclusus. Somewhere, at a convenient distance, must have been the abbot’s stable for his six horses—sex equi ad stabulum domini abbatis,—in charge of his boy, whose russet suit cost fifteen pence. The chalice, paten and cruets which were in the abbot’s house would seem to mean that one of the rooms was an oratory, with an altar. Under the abbot’s lodgings were the cells for offenders.

From the north-west corner of the second story, over the entrance, a passage opened into the upper course of the long gallery. Here was a hall with many windows, warmed here and there with fire-places, extending east to the infirmary, north to the chapel of nine altars, and west to the dormitory. Here the abbot could walk; here, in the oriel which projected into the chapel, he could say his prayers and hear mass quite by himself. He was the only member of the monastic family who had the privilege of privacy.

The gallery is almost entirely ruined, but a comparison with the arrangements of other monastic houses suggests that the upper storey of the western part, next to the dormitory, was the library or the writing-room. Here, where there was plenty of light, the records and accounts may have been kept. Here the books may have been copied which were used in the choir, and in the cloister and in the school. The completed records, especially such as related to the abbey lands, may have been stored in the room over the warming house, now used as a museum for fragments of pottery and broken carvings found in the ruins. This room, reached by the day stairs to the dormitory, had a bar at the door by which the occupant could lock himself in. This bar is a perplexing fact, and nobody has as yet explained why any official of the abbey should need to defend himself against intrusion in this peremptory fashion. If this was the muniment room, it held the great books of the Chartulary of Fountains, of which the volume A to C is in the British Museum. D to J is at Ripley Castle, and K to M is in the library of the late Sir Thomas Phillips. The remaining volumes are not yet traced. Here were kept the bundles of title-deeds, now at Studley Hall; with pendant seals, which show that there were neighbouring farmers who attested their signatures with impressions of Roman gems which their forefathers had turned up with the plough. The President Book would be kept here, with its dated list of abbots up to 1471; and the Coucher Book, with its register of the dealings of the monks with their manors. These two probably lay by the abbot’s side as he sat in his place in the chapter house at business meetings. They are now preserved in the muniment room at Studley Hall.

The long corridor, which connected the cloister with the infirmary, passed, as we have seen, the abbot’s lodging on the right and the entrance-way to the chapel of the nine altars on the left. Opposite the chapel entrance there was an opening into the coal-yard. Coal was found here when the recent excavations were made. In the south-east corner of this yard lay the abbey rubbish heap, the materials of which were apparently shovelled out from the window beside it, whose sill shows the marks of this daily exercise. Here were found various broken dishes, a sickle blade, a copper can, bushels of oyster shells, and bones identified as belonging to beef, mutton, pork and venison, together with a great quantity of ashes.

The room out of which this refuse was thrown is reached by a passage which opens out of the long corridor close by the infirmary door. Here, according to Mr. Walbran, stood the reservoir, fed by a lead pipe from a spring on the high bank.

The meat bones in the rubbish heap suggest the near neighbourhood of the House of Merciful Meals. This is the room which lies to the south of the reservoir and the coal-yard. A screen extended across the east end of the misericord, and there was a dais for the high table at the west end. Along the north wall are still remains of one of the stone benches. Tables stood here, as in the refectory of the cloister.