York Guides

The position of the early twelfth-century reredorter or latrine block is shown by the doorway and lamp niche mentioned above. It was 31 ft wide, and projected eastwards from the dormitory. Within the building, the drain ran along the south side and was flushed by an underground channel from the river. This reredorter was 96 ft long, and some parts of its eastern end are incorporated in the abbot's house. In this part of the building the drain was vaulted, and three privies, accessible only from outside its south wall, discharged into it. When the dormitory was remodelled and heightened later in the twelfth century, the greater part of the old reredorter was demolished and a new one was built along the river bank off the south end of the new dormitory. At first it was intended that a new drain should be built down the centre of the new reredorter, and doorways were provided in the east wall of the dormitory undercroft north and south of the proposed line of this drain. When work started, however, it was decided to put the drain along the south side of the building, and the southern doorway had to be blocked. This new drain is well preserved, and it opened on to the river by a series of four arches the piers of which, pointed like the cutwaters of a bridge, remain together with the massive arch at its eastern end.

North of the drain, the basement of the reredorter formed a long room, once vaulted in five bays, but later divided by a thick cross wall. It has a doorway (later blocked), a fireplace and a window in its north wall. Its purpose is not known with certainty, but at Pontigny a similar room was used by the novices. The sanitary arrangements were on the vanished first floor, reached directly from the dormitory, the latrine seats being ranged along the south wall discharging into the drain beneath.