§ 47.

In all monasteries, save in those of the Carthusian order, the walk next the church was the ordinary place where the convent spent the hours of the day allotted to study and contemplation. For this reason the cloister was normally planned on the south, the sunnier side of the church, where the high walls of nave and transept checked the north and east winds. This walk, which was omitted from the route of the Sunday procession, was sometimes enclosed at either end by screens. In early times the brethren seem to have sat side by side on the stone benches which, as at Worcester, were set against the church wall between the buttresses. But at a later date the part of the walk next the court was divided by short partition walls into a number of small studies called carrels (caroli, i.e. enclosed spaces). At Durham, where the walk was ten bays long and was lighted by ten three-light windows, there were thirty carrels, three to each window. The carrels remain at Gloucester, twenty in number, two to each of the ten four-light windows. They were roofed at the level of the window-transoms, so that the upper portions of the windows gave plenty of light to the walk behind. Each contained a desk for books: at Durham they were wainscoted, and entered by doors, the tops of which were pierced, so that each monk as he worked was under survey. As private property was forbidden, no religious was allowed to keep books of his own in his carrel. Manuscripts in use were kept in special cupboards or almeries (armaria), which at Durham were ranged against the church wall. Such book-cupboards were placed in the cloister where there was room for them. At Worcester there are two in the east walk near the chapter-house door, while at Gloucester the easternmost carrel and two small cupboards projecting into the court from the east walk were probably used for this purpose. In Cistercian houses a special place was set aside for the library; but in the houses of most orders no definite part of the plan was so distinguished, and it is not until a late date that, at Canterbury and Durham, we hear of separate rooms assigned to the library, as distinct from the cupboards and presses in the cloister[7].