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Byland Abbey: History
Byland Abbey: Buildings
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The kitchen
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. |
