§ 72.
The infirmary hall in its simplest form was
an aisleless oblong, on either side of which was a row
of beds. From the east side or end opened the
infirmary chapel. The hall, however, was sometimes
too wide to be roofed in one span without support,
and consequently aisled halls became very usual,
divided either by regular arcades with a clerestory
above or by upright posts of wood. The beds were
placed within the aisles, the nave forming a central
gangway. This was a common plan in medieval
hospitals, many of which were quasi-conventual
establishments following the rule of St Augustine:
St Mary's hospital at Chichester, a long hall running
east and west, with a wooden roof of one span
supported on each side of the nave by upright posts
which are bound together by longitudinal trusses,
and with an aisleless chapel screened off at the east
end, is a famous surviving example of its use. At
Ely and Canterbury the Norman infirmaries were
divided by stone arcades and clerestoried; while at
Gloucester and Peterborough there are substantial
remains of aisled infirmaries of the thirteenth century.
Most of the south aisle at Peterborough is now included
in one of the canons' houses, while the chapel
at the east end of the infirmary forms the dining-room
of another. In the infirmary hall at Fountains,
which ran north and south, with the chapel and
kitchen on its eastern side, the arcades were returned
across the ends, and there were large fireplaces in the
end walls. A fireplace was a necessity, and, where
no original fireplaces can be traced in the side or
end walls, there was presumably a middle hearth,
the smoke from which escaped through a louvre in
the roof. As a rule the beds were arranged at right
angles to the side walls. At Furness, however, where
there were no arcades and the hall was lighted by
windows in the upper part of the walls, the north and
south walls contained a number of arched recesses
near the floor, each lighted by a small window and
wide enough to contain a bed with its side against
the wall. Similar recesses have been noted in a
portion of the east aisle of the infirmary of the lay
brothers at Fountains, against the end wall of the
lay brothers' rere-dorter. In later days it became
the general custom to divide the aisles into separate
rooms, often with their own fireplaces. This was
usual by the beginning of the fifteenth century: it
is known to have been done at Meaux before 1396,
and there is much evidence for it in the Lincoln
episcopal registers of the next fifty years. At
Canterbury the south aisle was walled up before
1400 and divided into rooms as a lodging for the
sub-prior. In Cistercian infirmaries, as at Fountains,
Kirkstall, Tintern and Waverley, there are abundant
traces of this practice. A peculiar arrangement was
adopted in the fourteenth-century infirmary at Westminster,
where the hall was removed and a number
of separate rooms were arranged round a cloister,
the aisled chapel of the hall being retained on the
east side. At Jervaulx, where the infirmary hall was
not large, part of the sub-vault of the dorter was
partitioned off into separate rooms, probably as an
annexe to the infirmary.
