York Guides

Early Cistercian custom required the abbot to sleep in the dormitory, but as time went on the duties of his office made it more and more desirable for him to have lodgings of his own. One of the first expedients was to build a lodging for him near the end of the reredorter, through which he could remain technically in touch with the dormitory.

Only the basement of this building remains, and it has a complex history. The dates of the various alterations are best understood by referring to the plan. In the time of Abbot Coxwold, about 1320, the house extended from the north wall of the old reredorter to the north wall of the new one, and its basement was divided by a wall into a narrow western and a wider eastern part. The eastern part was subdivided into two rooms by the south wall of the old reredorter in which a group of three latrine shafts can be seen, blocked up in the fourteenth century but now exposed again by the collapse of the blocking. Access to the northern room was by a doorway in its north wall and by spiral stairs leading down from the rooms above. The southern room has the base of a bay window built outside its east wall.

The narrower western part was subdivided into three little cells which were prisons for recalcitrant monks. Each had an iron staple for the prisoner's chains (the northernmost remains fixed in the stone pavement) and two had latrines, one of which could be flushed by pouring a bucket of water through a channel contrived in its west wall. In the nineteenth century the remains of an inscription scratched on the wall of the southernmost cell could still be deciphered as vale libertas (farewell liberty). There can be little doubt that the monk William Esteby was a prisoner in one of these cells when he was freed from, his shackles and rescued during an armed assault on the abbey in 1423.

In Abbot Huby's time (1495-1526) the house was extended southwards to absorb the eastern end of the later reredorter. The two eastern bays of the reredorter were cut off from the rest by a thick partition wall with spiral stairs to the rooms above, the base for another great bay window was built against the east wall, and the easternmost arch of the great drain was blocked by the base for a third bay window on the south. Stairs were also built leading up from the infirmary passage to the first floor at the north end of the house.

The arrangements of the house have to be inferred from the plan of the basements only. As remodelled by Abbot Huby, its main entrance was from the infirmary passage, where the flight of steps led up to a lobby at first-floor level at the north end of the hall, which occupied the space over the three prison cells and the two rooms to the east of them, thus measuring about 48 by 28 ft. The screens passage would be at the north end, where spiral stairs also led down to the basement, and the dais would be at the south end, lit by the bay window in the east wall. South of the hall lay the great chamber with a bay window to the south overlooking the river and another to the east probably serving as an oratory. Spiral stairs in the north-west angle of the chamber led down to the basement, and perhaps upwards to a bedchamber on the second floor. The thickness of the stair block at the north end of the house suggests that a return flight led up from the lobby to the upper storey of the infirmary passage, serving as the abbot's gallery. Great breasts of masonry outside the north and south walls of the gallery represent fireplaces and a latrine, and the northern extension of the gallery led to the abbot's private pew looking into the Chapel of the Nine Altars. Off the west side of this northern gallery a room over the surviving basement of Abbot Huby's time was probably that known as the 'Church Chamber', used as the abbot's secretariat, with a latrine just south of it in the angle of the two galleries.