The kitchen lay in the southern range and was
positioned in such a way that it could serve both the monks’ and
the lay-brothers’ refectories
through dumb-waiter style hatches. The kitchen was ventilated
and also vaulted, for it was important
to fireproof the building. A double fireplace stood in the centre,
with a chimney above; there were cupboards in the north wall
and a yard to the south, where fuel would have been stored. This
was
paved and indeed much of this paving can still be seen.(73)
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 not have been baked here but in the bakehouse, which
was in the outer court, beside the
brewhouse and woolhouse. At least two types of bread were baked
here – the better bread was for the convent, the poorer quality
bread was for the yeomen.(74) The
mid-fifteenth-century ‘Bursar’s
Account Book’ records the payment of 2s 8d in 1457-8 for
the purchase of knives for the kitchen.