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A building lies off the east side of the infirmary hall, near its northern end. It was built in the time of Abbot John of Kent and was two storeys high. The ground-floor room backs against the high platform carried by the tunnels, and so is some 8 ft below the level of the infirmary hall, and the first floor was some 5 ft above that level.

The ground-floor is well preserved, apart from its east wall which Aislabie replaced in the eighteenth century by a pair of rustic arches to give a more romantic aspect to the view from his belvedere at Anne Boleyn's Seat. The room was vaulted in five double bays from a central row of columns, and had a fireplace and a doorway in its north wall. Little of the first-floor room survives, but access to it was by a flight of steps that once occupied the little sunken yard, originally open to the north, lying between it and the infirmary hall. This upper room communicated with a much ruined structure that overlapped its southeast angle and that certainly contained a privy and probably acted as a small inner chamber as well.

The original use of these rooms is not known. A similar two-storeyed block attached to the infirmary hall at the Cistercian abbey of Ours-camp in France about the same date had an apothecary's office and store on the ground floor and an isolation ward above, and it may be that these rooms at Fountains served some similar purpose.

Whatever their use, it was changed late in the thirteenth century, and alterations were made to them then and in the early fourteenth century. When the infirmary chapel was built against the south wall of the chamber block, access from it to the upper room was contrived by inserting a narrow flight of steps in the thickness of the wall shared by the two buildings. A second flight of steps outside the chapel's west wall led to a landing at the head of the stairs in the sunken courtyard, and the latrine annexe at the south-east angle of the upper room was shortened. The lower room was divided by cross walls into three small rooms, the easternmost reached by a narrow doorway and a breakneck flight of steps from outside the east end of the chapel, and the sunken court was provided with a new wall at the south end and a massive entrance arch to the north, showing that it and the stairs within it were now roofed.

At the end of the fifteenth century these stairs were abandoned. The arch on the north was blocked by a wall with a window in it, and the sunken court was floored at the level of the head of the former stairs, making a lobby outside the upper room. This lobby could now be reached by the stairs outside the west end of the chapel, and by a new flight rising from the east aisle of the infirmary hall. The upper room was also now provided with a private pew, the massive stone base of which remains, overlooking the chapel.

There is little doubt that these alterations represent the conversion of the block into lodgings for a retired abbot, for such apartments are often associated with infirmaries from the late thirteenth century onwards. Six abbots of Fountains resigned and lived on in retirement at the abbey, and the initial alterations to the block probably represent the creation of an establishment for the first of them, Abbot Peter Alyng, in 1279. At first this lodging had an independent entrance from the north, service stairs to the kitchen on the south, and private stairs by which the abbot could make use of the infirmary chapel. Later, when the creation of private rooms had robbed the infirmary hall of its communal use, the main entrance was moved to the west, and the ex-abbot could hear service from the private pew without descending into the chapel-both features reflecting increased status.

The infirmary chapel was built against the south side of the chamber block late in the thirteenth century. It is a plain rectangle of two bays, separated from the infirmary hall by a small yard. Its west doorway gives on to this yard and is set north of centre to give room for a flight of steps to clear its head. Against the north wall of the chapel is the base of the pew belonging to the upper chamber, and just east of it the doorway to the narrow stairs leading up to that chamber. The pew was a late fifteenth-century addition, and once had a stone frieze and cornice carved with figures of a chained dragon and a monkey that are preserved in the museum. Part of the jamb of the group of lancets that formed the chapel's east window remains against the wall of the chamber block.

The infirmary kitchen

The infirmary kitchen lies to the south of the chapel and is separated from it and from the infirmary hall by small yards as a precaution against fire. A passage of irregular shape leads from the doorway in the kitchen's north wall to the yard between the chapel and the hall.

There would be an earlier kitchen on this site, replaced by the present stone building in the fourteenth century. It is a rectangular building divided by a cross-wall into a wide northern and narrow southern part, and its deep buttresses show that it was vaulted in stone.

The northern part was the main kitchen, with two doorways to the north and one to the west which led to a narrow annexe, now wholly ruined. The two kitchen fireplaces are in the cross-wall, and in the north-east angle of the room there is a great stone grid in the floor, forming part of the vault of the southernmost tunnel and looking like a mullioned and transomed window laid flat on the ground. This grid was once fitted with trap-doors and could be used for the disposal of kitchen waste directly into the river below. Late in the Middle Ages four ovens were built in the room; one was in the western annexe, the second in the cross-wall near the eastern fireplace, the third and largest projected through the east wall, and the fourth was set against that wall near the grid.

The southern part of the building was the scullery, reached by three doorways alternating with the two fireplaces in the cross-wall. There are remains of the flagged floor with its stone gutters and, when the second oven was made, a fireplace was built in this room against the back of the eastern fireplace in the main kitchen. There is a narrow recess in the east jamb of the westernmost doorway of the cross-wall, and when this was first excavated it was found to have contained z steep flight of stone steps, perhaps leading up into the flues where bacon could be hung for smoking.