§ 57.
The ground-floor of the western range of
buildings, as at Canterbury, Chester and Peterborough,
was usually the cellarer's building (
cellarium), containing
the great cellar and buttery of the monastery,
and frequently divided from the church by a vaulted
passage, which was the main entrance to the cloister
from the
curia and was the outer parlour, where
necessary business could be done with lay-folk. But
the variable position of the
curia with regard to the
cloister made the use of this range liable to variation;
and sometimes, as we have seen, the great cellar was
a vault beneath the frater. In two convents of women,
the Benedictine house of St Radegund at Cambridge
and the Augustinian house at Lacock, the ground-floor
was divided into separate rooms. The outer parlour
at Lacock was a passage near the centre of the
range: the rooms next the church may have been
used by the chaplains of the convent, while a large
room north of the passage may have been the guest-hall
where inferior visitors or pilgrims were entertained
by the cellaress. The upper floor probably
contained the abbess' lodging or
camera, with her
guest-hall, in which visitors of the better class were
accommodated, above the cellaress' hall. It was at
any rate a very general custom, save in Cistercian
monasteries, for the upper floor to form part of the
abbot's or prior's separate lodging, and to contain his
guest-hall. Originally the head of the house slept in
the dorter with his brethren; but before the end of
the twelfth century he began to occupy separate
rooms, which in the larger monasteries developed
into a house of some size. At Peterborough the
abbot's lodging, now the bishop's palace, consisted of
a separate block of buildings standing to the west
of the
cellarium, and entered from the outer court
through its own gatehouse. It was joined to the
cellarium by a wing, on the upper floor of which was
the abbot's solar or great chamber; and this communicated
with the guest-hall on the first floor of the
cellarium, between which and the church, above the
outer parlour, was the abbot's chapel. The older
abbot's lodging at Gloucester, afterwards appropriated
to the prior, and now used as the deanery, was also
separated by a small court from the cloister, and
a wing next the church contained the abbot's chapel
above the outer parlour; but here there was no
western cloister range, and consequently the abbot's
guest-hall was not within the claustral buildings.
The archbishop's palace at Canterbury occupied
practically the whole space west of the
cellarium,
with entrances to the cloister at both ends: the
curia
was on the north of the cloister, and the outer
parlour was a passage between the west end of the
frater and the cellarer's building.
