§ 73.

A special kitchen, where more delicate food (cibi subtiliores) could be cooked for the infirm, was a necessary adjunct to an infirmary, and is usually found divided from it by a narrow yard, crossed by a covered passage, as at Fountains. The infirmary kitchen at Furness was octagonal, but the normal plan was rectangular. The Furness kitchen served the old infirmary: when this was converted into the abbot's lodging and a new infirmary built, it probably served both; but in the fifteenth century a kitchen was made in the abbot's lodging, the octagonal kitchen seems to have been taken down, and the infirmary was probably served from a meat-kitchen which, as has been explained in the previous chapter, also served the new frater and misericord. The misericord or flesh-frater had no fixed position in the plan of the infirmary buildings. At Fountains, it was an aisleless hall, lying between the infirmary hall and the abbot's lodging, and must have been served through the infirmary hall from the kitchen.