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Fountains Abbey: History
Fountains Abbey: Buildings
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The abbot’s house (2/2)
Excavation of the site has revealed much about the layout of the abbot’s lodgings and the lifestyle of the abbots. Account books and leases from the later Middle Ages also shed light on the structure and furnishings of these buildings, and the activities that went on therein. For example, they mention various parts of the complex including the abbot’s kitchen, storeroom, garden, chapel, hall and chamber, and they record payments associated with these.(96) Thus, we learn that in the mid-fifteenth century oat straw was strewn on the floor of the abbot’s chamber – rye straw was used in the church and rushes elsewhere.(97)
The abbots clearly lived and dined in style. Abbot Greenwell (1442-71) and whoever was dining with him, feasted on figs, walnuts, pears, fish and oysters, as well partridges, quails and venison.(98) Greenwell’s successors evidently dined just as finely, for excavations in the nineteenth century uncovered a hoard of bones and shells – beef, mutton, pork and venison bones, oyster, mussel and cockle shells.(99) The fifteenth-century ‘Bursar’s Account Book’ also records various medicinal or health-related purchases that were made for Abbot Greenwell, including unctions and spices (pepper, ginger and liquorice), and even urinals.(100) It also reveals that the abbot engaged minstrels, story-tellers and fools, but unfortunately does not state where these entertainers performed or to whom.(101) |
