The chapter-house at Fountains lay in the east
range of the cloister. This was the typical location for a building
of this kind, perhaps as it was one of the most inaccessible areas
to outsiders and fairly well protected from the noise and bustle
of daily life. The remains of the chapter-house belong to Abbot
Richard’s impressive rebuilding, completed before his
death in 1170. Richard was the first of many abbots to be buried
here.
This large, aisled building comprised of six bays and had three
entrances to the cloister; the two westernmost bays could be screened
off and used for storing books.(37) It
was ornately decorated and was the first building at Fountains
to use the grey Nidderdale
marble,
which would have made a striking contrast to the white lime-washed
interior.(38)
The chapter-house was a focal point of monastic
life. It was here that the monks gathered for an hour each day
to attend
the chapter
meeting, so called as proceedings began with the reading of a chapter
from the Rule
of St Benedict. The monks sat on wooden or stone
benches around the walls. The abbot, or his deputy who presided
in his place, occupied a pulpit in the eastern part of the room;
there was also a lectern here for the reader. There were other
occasions when the community gathered in the chapter-house, for
example, to discuss business or to welcome a distinguished visitor;
the entire community gathered here on feast days when the abbot
delivered a sermon. Disciplinary matters were addressed in public
in the chapter-house and punishment meted out, but monks might
also come here to confess their sins in private to the prior. The
chapter-house might also be used for reading or for copying manuscripts,
when it was either too cold or too windy to do so in the cloister.(39) Reginald
of Durham’s Life of Godric, describes how the monks
of Fountains borrowed the Life of St Godric from the Durham
community, to make their own copy. Out of veneration for the saint,
it was
decided to illuminate the text with bright colours, and the cantor
(precentor) completes
this skilful work in the chapter-house.(40)
The
chapter-house was a common place for the burial of abbots, especially
before burial was permitted in the abbey church. Between
1170 and 1345, nineteen of the thirty-eight abbots who presided
over Fountains were buried here.(41) In
the late eighteenth century (1790-1791) the chapter-house was excavated
to locate these graves,
and the gardener’s digging recovered the graves of the abbots
from Richard
of Clairvaux (d. 1170) to William
Rigton (d. 1346).
Other notable persons may have been buried in the Fountains chapter-house,
for example Turgisius, the former abbot of Kirkstall who
retired to Fountains in the early thirteenth century, and important
benefactors.(42)