§ 78.
Monasteries of other orders were generally
content with a single outer court, although there is
evidence, for example at Gloucester, of some of the
offices being arranged round a smaller court entered
from the
curia[18]. The great gatehouse of the
curia,
of which many fine examples remain, was the main
entrance to the monastery, and was usually a building
with one or more upper floors and a vaulted passage or
gate-hall on the ground-floor. In the earlier examples,
as at Peterborough, the gateway was a single wide
arch, as is also the case in the early fourteenth-century
gatehouse at Kirkham. This gave entrance
to carriages and foot-passengers alike. Later gatehouses
were built on a larger scale, and the gate-hall
was entered by a wide portal with a low doorway or
postern at the side for pedestrians, as at Bridlington,
Christchurch gate, Canterbury, Torre, and St Albans.
On one side of the gate-hall was the porter's lodge.
Occasionally, as at Peterborough, the chamber on
the upper floor was used as a chapel. The finest
of all existing English examples is the gatehouse at
Thornton, remarkable for the barbican which gives
it as important a place in military as in monastic
architecture; but the Christchurch and St Augustine's
gatehouses at Canterbury, and the two gatehouses
at Bury St Edmunds are hardly second to it in
interest and beauty. The southern and earlier
gatehouse at Bury was the
porta coemeterii directly
opposite the west front of the church, and is a square
Norman tower, not unlike the great tower of a
Norman castle: the northern gatehouse, built in the
fourteenth century, was the entrance to the outer
court of the monastery. Large monasteries were
frequently provided with more than one outer gatehouse:
thus the Christchurch gateway at Canterbury
was the entrance to the cathedral and the part of the
churchyard set apart for lay burials, while the main
gatehouse was in the western wall of the outer court.
Special entrances to the lay-folks' cemetery are also
found at Gloucester and Rochester; while at Norwich,
as at Bury, one of the two western gateways leads
directly to the cathedral, while the other was the
main entrance to the precinct.
