
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

Cistercian House, former
Cistercian House, former
The gatehouse was at the E end of the outer court, and gave access to the inner or great court in front of the abbey buildings (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 73-4). It was built in the 13th century, but vault corbels are included here as they may help interpret the Transitional overlap.
Writing in 1970, Gilyard-Beer stated 'The lower parts of its walls are now buried, and the only remains now visible are the upper parts of the north and south walls of the gate passage... this was vaulted throughout.' (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 73-4). To the S, an equally long building was the porter's lodge; this too was vaulted.
By the time of the second site visit in 2015, a building to the E end of the N wall had been converted to display information about the abbey. No stonework was displayed at that time. It is called the Porter's Lodge.
For further information, bibliography, etc, see report for Fountains Abbey, church.
Cistercian House, former
The W range runs N to S, presenting a straight face to the great court from which the cellarer's office projects. At its maximum extent it was 22 bays long, but it had been shorter and narrower. The range was subdivided into various rooms – stores, outer parlour, lay brothers’ refectory; above it was the lay brothers' dormitory (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 57-60). The cellarer's office is an early survival (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 58-9).
The vaulting is famous, but also a few doorways survive; numerous corbels low on the side walls support the vault, while a series of subtle carvings on the southernmost central piers provide detail in this spectacular space.
Corbels are numbered from N to S [not L to R on the wall]. If a corbel was too damaged, no photo was taken; the numbering continues with the next photo.
The doorway into the S aisle of the church is recorded in the report on the church. (For further details of the abbey, see report for Fountains Abbey, church).
Cistercian House, former
A group of buildings in the SW of the Great Court. Both guest-houses provided a hall, chamber and privy on two floors (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 69-71). Coppack writes: 'Each building contained a separate suite of rooms on each floor: a hall with a wall-fireplace, a bed-chamber and a latrine which discharded into the river. The ground-floor suites were vaulted and of inferior quality to those on the upper floors, while the western guest-house was somewhat smaller than its eastern counterpart. Thus accommodation of four different qualities was provided by the two buildings' (Coppack 1993, 47).
The E guest house is a rectangle six bays by two, aligned roughly N-S, perhaps to take in the view of the W front of the church from its first floor windows. Five piers remain down the centre of the ground floor and have capitals; vaulting corbels remain on all four walls. Above that, the N gable has a blocked circular window, with two round-headed windows below, in which traces remain of sub-arches dividing them into twin openings. Architectural detail (doorways and windows) is plain and simple: the only sculpture is in the provision for vaulting.
The W guest house, aligned E-W, is more ruinous than the E guest house, but it has the remnants of a fireplace at first floor level, and a blocked circular window above that, in its W gable. Plain round headed arches, flush with the walling, are used for windows. There is no sculpture except for one vaulting corbel, on the W wall. The W guest house was eventually L-shaped, but nothing remains standing of the N unit.
For further information, see report for Fountains Abbey, church.
Cistercian House, former
The cloister at Fountains Abbey, wrote Gilyard-Beer, 'is about 125ft square, and once had a covered alley on each side, the lean-to roof of which has left marks on the surrounding buildings. Fragments of the alley walls survived until 1770, but there are no visible remains today although the foundations were traced in the nineteenth-century excavations' (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 44).
The cavity for the tabula remains on the E wall, this was the waxed board which showed the daily duties of the various monks.
Enough fragments remain for reconstruction drawings of the cloister arcades to have been made (see Comments).
Stonework of the earlier cloister has been identified, superceeded by later more obvious work (Coppack 2012, 10; fig. 2.4).
For further information, see report for Fountains Abbey: church.
Cistercian House, former
The passage at Fountains joins the cloister to the infirmary walk. It was developed from previous uses in the later twelfth century and thus its remains are rather disjointed. The W section has a half-barrel vault and once served as a library; the 4th bay of the rib-vaulted area was entered from the S transept and was a sacristy; the four E bays were newly-enclosed in the late twelfth century. As well as W and E entrances, there is an entrance from the transept, which is still open, and there is a blocked entrance in the S wall which led into the vestibule of the chapter house, where more books were kept [we all know the problem of books] (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 45). The passage is windowless.
For further information, see report for Fountains Abbey, church.
Cistercian House, former
The refectory at Fountains is entered from the S walk of the cloister by the most impressive doorway in its whole length (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 54-5; Coppack 1993, 51-3). The S wall of the cloister has a generous laver or lavatorium either side of the doorway.
This is the second (stone) refectory, and follows the custom of Cistercian communities in the later twelfth century in being elongated N-S; it bridges a concealed water channel at its S end and ends close to the N bank of the Skell. The interior is rectangular, of five bays by two, and there was an arcade down the middle. The seating arrangements for the community around the E, S and W walls, represented by alterations in the levels of the grass and by stone supports for its tables, can be reconstructed, (Gilyard-Beer 1970, 54-55).
The main room had six windows in the W and E walls, and two pairs on the S and N walls; these are shafted internally; part of a blocked oculus can just be made out high in the S wall. The roof was formed in two N-S spans using the arcade and the W and E walls; there were thus two roofs making a double ridge and double gables.
A gallery extends through three bays of the W wall and projects to the W; the mealtime readings were given from here. The gallery is entered by a round-headed doorway at the N end. On the R, inside this doorway, is a recess. A stair rises L to the gallery which is open onto the refectory. The base corbel to support the reading-desk remains; also another corbel further along the same wall.
Outside the doorway are two lavers which had piped water.
For further information, see the report, Fountains Abbey: 1. Church.
Cistercian House, former
The chapter house building at Fountains comprises six bays E-W and three N-S, all formerly vaulted. The two westernmost bays of the six were divided from the main room, the point of division is indicated by the shafted corbels, N4 and S4, and by the changes in the wall surface marking the position of the vault. The two bays at the W end were lower because of the monks' dormitory above, whereas there was no building above the E end, which has clerestory windows. At ground level, there are three window openings in the E wall, three on the S and two on the N wall at the E end; these windows were shafted, but only the capitals remain and these are very worn.
The W end of the chapter house (properly, its vestibule) has three equal arches opening onto the cloister. No shafts remain unfortunately, and wind erosion has removed most details of the capitals beyond useful description. In the past, the N and S bays were partitioned off and used for books, but whether that was already the case in the twelfth century is uncertain, and seems unlikely.
The work is Gothic in its inspiration. The piers that supported the vault were of grey Nidderdale 'marble' (its earliest use at Fountains), and by Cistercian standards it was a highly-decorated building (Coppack 1993, 45). Fragments of pillars in the marble are still in the room, and there is a loose capital in Nidderdale marble from the chapter house (see main entry, 1. Church, in the section Loose Sculpture.)
For further information, see report for Fountains Abbey, church.
Cistercian House, former
The day room at Fountains is part of the E range, being continuous with the offices on the E side of the cloister; it is aligned N-S and above it was the S end of the monks' dormitory. The monks' day-room used to be called the sub-dorter or dormitory undercroft.
The day room is reached through a doorway at the S end of the E cloister walk, there was a passage formed in the N bay which led E to the monks' infirmary. That left a room 2 bays wide and 6 bays N-S. Of this, only the lower parts of the central arcade remain.
For further information, see report for Fountains Abbey, church.
Cistercian House, former
The doorway to the monks' day-stairs, cupboard and entrance to the warming-room at Fountains occupy the eastern end of the S wall of the cloister. The stairs led up to the monks' dormitory on the E side of the cloister. Today, with the dormitory long gone, it provides a view of the north side of the valley where the caves or quarries were, used by the first monks. See Gilyard-Beer 1970, 51-54.
For further information, see report for Fountains Abbey, church.
Cistercian House, former
A squarish room between the monks' refectory on the S side of the cloister and the lay-brothers' refectory in the W range. Traces of the two central fireplaces can be seen. The room was vaulted, and some corbels of the vault remain on the N, E and S walls.
For the hatch to the monks' side, see report for the Refectory. For further information, see report for Fountains Abbey, church.