§ 50.
In most houses, as in the Augustinian abbey
of canons at Haughmond and of canonesses at Lacock,
the chapter-house roof was on a level with that of
the cloister, to allow of the continuation of the dorter
or of a passage from the dorter to the transept across
its western end. But in the larger houses, especially
of the Benedictines, it was often an aisleless hall
occupying the whole height of the range. Where, as
at Canterbury, Gloucester and Reading, it was of this
type and opened directly from the cloister, the dorter
was obviously shut off from direct communication
with the church. But at Bristol, Chester, Westminster
and elsewhere, the lofty chapter-houses stood
entirely at the back of the eastern range, and the
dorter was carried across a vaulted vestibule, which
was divided by columns into three or, at Westminster,
into two alleys, and was either open to the cloister,
as at Bristol, or, as at Chester, was entered by a
doorway with a window on either side, like the doorway
of the chapter-house beyond. It has been said
that the chapter-house was usually planned without
aisles: this was the case in the larger Benedictine
houses, and in such houses of moderate size as
Haughmond, the Premonstratensian abbey of Dryburgh
in Scotland, or the Benedictine nunnery of
St Radegund at Cambridge. But the Cistercian
order preferred chapter-houses divided into alleys
by rows of columns, and the influence of their
beautiful buildings may be seen in the aisled chapter-houses
of Lacock or of the Premonstratensian abbey
of Beeleigh. Nor was the chapter-house always
oblong. Apsidal examples have been given; and,
when that at Gloucester was rebuilt in the fifteenth
century, it was finished with a three-sided apse.
There are also circular and polygonal chapter-houses.
At Worcester the twelfth-century chapter-house is a
circular building, entered directly from the cloister,
and vaulted from a central column. In the fifteenth
century, when the abutments shewed signs of giving
way, it was remodelled externally into a ten-sided
polygon. No vestibule was necessary here, as the
dorter was placed in another part of the cloister, and
more room could accordingly be given to the chapter-house.
At Dore, the chapter-house was polygonal; at
Margam it was internally circular, externally twelve-sided.
The Benedictine chapter-house at Evesham
was ten-sided. Between 1245 and 1250 was built
the octagonal chapter-house of Westminster, the
prototype of the secular buildings at Salisbury
and Wells, raised upon an undercroft and divided
from the cloister by a long vestibule; and there was
another octagonal chapter-house in the Augustinian
priory of Carlisle. The most peculiar plan was that of
the twelfth-century Premonstratensian chapter-house
at Alnwick, where a rectangular western vestibule was
combined with a circular eastern portion of the same
height, roofed in one span without a central column.
