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.
