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Roche Abbey: the gatehouse(20)
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The entrance to the abbey precinct
was via an outer gatehouse, which no longer survives. This stood
to the north of the monastery and controlled access to the precinct.
Once visitors to Roche had passed through the outer gatehouse at
Roche they would have proceeded about sixty metres along a lane
to an inner gatehouse, which was built into the rocks. It was here
that the porter of the house, a monastic official (obedientiary)
of some standing, officiated between Lauds and Compline each day
receiving visitors and administering alms. In the early days the
porter would have returned to the cloister after Compline and slept
in the dormitory with the rest of the community, but later on he
probably slept in a chamber in the gatehouse.
The porter's duties
The porter, or his helper,
manned the abbey gate from Lauds to Compline each day. He wore
the
scapular
while working and
whenever the Offices were sung in the church he was to pull
up his hood and remain in silence. At the end of Compline the
porter closed the gate and returned to the cloister. The porter
represented the abbey to the outside world and mediated between
outsiders and the community. He welcomed visitors (the exact
procedure that he should follow is detailed fully in the twelfth-century
customary of the Order), he announced their arrival and communicated
their requests to the abbot; moreover he ensured that they
did not disrupt monastic life within. Whereas the Benedictine
houses appointed an almoner to dispense charity on behalf of
the community, this was the task of the Cistercian porter – he
distributed food and clothing to the poor and at Beaulieu Abbey,
Hampshire, it was the porter’s responsibility to select
thirteen poor people to be fed and lodged in the abbey’s
hospice each night. The porter was also to exercise discretion
and was not to give alms to women of the neighbouring villages – except
in times of famine – or to those who were too lazy to
work. |
The inner gatehouse at Roche is now regarded as one of the earliest
and finest Cistercian gatehouses in the country. It was a two-storey
building, with a high-pitched roof; nothing remains of the roofing
but some of the original paving survives. The gatehouse comprised
two parts: the gateway and the gatehall. Visitors entered the
porch of the gateway through inward-swinging wooden gates and
were received
by the porter, whose chamber was on the right. On passing through
an archway visitors entered the gatehall, a rib-vaulted building
with two arches, the larger of which was intended for vehicles,
such as carts, the smaller for those on foot. Once in the gatehall
visitors either proceeded straight on to the inner court or passed
through a porch to the right, which led to the outer court.
The upper floor of
the gatehouse could be accessed either from a circular staircase
in the north wall of the gatehall or by
an external stairway. It seems that this level contained a
large rectangular
room and three smaller chambers. The former had wall benches
along three sides and probably functioned as a business centre,
where
the abbot could hold his court. There may also have been a
chapel here where visitors could pray.
The actual dating of
the gatehouse remains rather unclear. Recent architectural analysis
suggests that the gatehouse dates from the fourteenth century
and is not, as is generally held, a fourteenth-century rebuilding
of
a twelfth-century plan.
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