§ 36.
Lay-folk were permitted to enter the naves
of monastic churches; and, even in Cistercian churches,
where the whole building was strictly devoted to the
uses of the monastery, doorways are sometimes found,
as at Kirkstall, which may have been made for this
purpose. In a large number of Benedictine and
Augustinian churches, though by no means in the
majority, an altar in the nave was appropriated to
parochial services, and was served by a secular vicar
or a curate appointed by the convent. The lay-folk
entered the church by a doorway in the aisle opposite
the cloister: the great western doorway was used only
on special occasions, as in the procession on Palm
Sunday or at an episcopal visitation. Sometimes, as
at Blyth and Leominster, a special addition of an
aisle or a second nave and aisle was made to the
original nave, for the sake of parochial services.
Such services, however, frequently interfered with
the monastic offices, especially if the convent was
singing one thing and the parishioners another. At
Wymondham in Norfolk a dispute about the use of
the bells by the parish led to a serious quarrel in the
fifteenth century. The parishioners fastened up the
rood-screen doors and appropriated the nave, and the
dispute was healed only by the building of a separate
bell-tower for the parish at the west end of the church.
The monks of Rochester and the canons of Holy
Trinity, Aldgate, built churches within their outer
precincts for the parishioners whose services interfered
with their own. This arrangement, like that by which
the pairs of parish churches at Coventry, Evesham
and Bury St Edmunds were distinct from the monastery
churches hard by, put an end to such constant
wrangling as occurred between monks and lay-folk
over the use of the south transept at Chester.
