The kitchen lay in the southern range and was
positioned in such a way that it was accessible from the cloister,
and could serve both the monks’ and the lay-brothers’ refectories
through dumb-waiter style hatches. The remains of the hatch that
serviced the lay-brothers’ refectory can be seen in the west
wall of the kitchen. The kitchen was ventilated and also vaulted,
for it was important to fireproof the building. The remains of
the kitchen at Byland do not belong to the original building but
the late fourteenth/early fifteenth-century remodelling. By this
time numbers had fallen and needs were less great; accordingly
the two fires here were fairly small. The original kitchen would
have required a much larger fireplace and more extensive facilities.
The
kitchen supplied the monks’ and the lay-brothers’ refectories
with fish and vegetables. No meat was cooked here, for this was
at first prohibited to all but the sick and, when later permitted,
it was cooked in a separate meat kitchen and eaten in a special
room known as the misericord. Bread would have been baked in the
bakehouse, in the outer court.
The small meat kitchen at Byland
lay off the southern and eastern ranges, and had four large fireplaces,
one in each wall. No standing
remains are now visible, but its location is known from excavation
of the site. It is not clear where the misericord was situated
at Byland, but a possible location is the southern part of the
monks’ dormitory. Falling numbers in the later Middle Ages
meant that not all of the dormitory would have been required for
sleeping quarters and the southern part could have been annexed
off to house the misericord.