York Guides

On the south side of the cloister are the warming-house, the frater, and the kitchen. The warming-house, measuring 28 ft by 32 ft, was entered at the north-east and had a fireplace on its west wall. This was the only room, except the kitchen and infirmary, where a fire was allowed by the Rule. It was altered soon after its erection, by being divided into two storeys, a stone vault being inserted to carry the upper floor. Access to the upper room must have been through the dormitory.

The frater or refectory, the dining hall of the monks, stands next to the warming-house. Its axis lies north and south, and it is about 100 ft long by 31 ft wide. It was entered from the cloister by a flight of steps, its floor being some 5 ft above cloister level. The frater had tall round-headed windows, but is too ruinous to show features such as the remains of the pulpit in its west wall, where the reader stood at meals. The lavatories for washing the hands before meals, which were usually placed in the cloister close to the frater door, have disap¬peared, except for a stone benching against the north wall of the warming-house.

Beneath the frater and below the level of the cloister was a room vaulted in two spans and lighted by narrow windows, which must have served as a cellar. The floor level has been raised, burying the bases of the piers, probably because of dampness (the same thing may be seen in the subvault of the dorter) and on the new floor level is the stone benching for a row of barrels, A door in the east wall leads out to the space between the frater and the dorter. In the fifteenth century a small two-storeyed building was erected across the south end of this space and beyond it to the south of the dorter a large kitchen with four fireplaces. This was the meat kitchen, which served the infirmary and guesthouses. By the Rule, the cooking of meat was not allowed in the monks' kitchen.

The monastic kitchen occupies the rest of the south side of the cloister and is entered by two doorways from the cloister; it was perhaps originally divided into two by a partition between the door¬ways, the western half serving as the kitchen of the lay brothers. In the monastic kitchen there was a central fireplace, of "which two pillars remain built up into later work. The latest development con¬sisted in the insertion of a room at the cast end of the kitchen, some 6 ft above the old floor level, with fireplaces back to back. There is no trace of the hatch from the kitchen into the frater. The day stairs to the dormitory of the lay brothers arc carried up against its west wall.