THE 1¼-FOOT MODULE (SUBMODULE)
There is good reason to assume that in certain installations
the inventor of the scheme made use of a submodule by
halving his standard module of 2½ feet, thus arriving at the
smallest module of 1¼ feet. I refer to this unit as a "submodule"
because it is used sparingly, in contrast to the
2½-foot unit which is used as a standard module throughout
the length and width of the Plan. I have pointed out that
2½ feet is one sixteenth of 40, the width assigned to the
nave of the Church; 1¼ is one thirty-second of this measure.
The peculiar values 2½ and 1¼—strange to anyone accustomed
to working with a metric scale—will ring a more
familiar tone if it is remembered that these units correspond
to 30 and 15 inches.
The Plan contains a number of installations which cannot
be explained in any other manner than on the assumption
that they have been constructed on a 1¼-foot module. We
have already encountered it in our analysis of the Dormitory
(fig. 60). The most convincing evidence for the use of the
submodule, however, is in the Monks' Vegetable Garden
(fig. 64).
The Garden covers a surface area that is twenty-one
standard 2½-foot units wide and thirty-three standard
2½-foot units long (52½ × 82½ feet). It consists of two rows
of planting beds, nine on either side, made accessible by a
carefully designed system of paths: three running lengthwise,
ten crosswise. The planting beds are 5 feet wide and
20 feet long. The width of the crosspaths by which they are
separated is less than 5 feet but more than 2½ feet. The
only logical way to relate nine planting beds 5 feet in width
to ten paths the width of which is less than 5 and more than
2½ feet within the available surface area, is to assume that
the draftsman conceived this layout within a grid of squares
of one-half the value of his standard square, i.e., a submodule
of 1¼ feet. This module would allow him to
develop the respective width of the planting beds and the
paths with absolute precision, lengthwise in the simple
sequence of
3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3 · 4 · 3,
and crosswise in the sequence of
The 1¼-foot module is also used in the Kitchen and Bath
houses of the Novitiate and the Infirmary (fig. 65). These
buildings are each nine by eighteen of the 2½-foot modules.
They are internally divided into two coequal squares of
nine by nine 2½-foot modules, one containing the Bath
House, the other the Kitchen. The hearth in each of these
two installations forms a square that is composed of four
2½-foot modules. To place a square of four 2½-foot modules
concentrically into the interior of a square of eighty-one
2½-foot modules is possible only within the framework of a
1¼-foot grid. In such a grid each side of the Kitchen and
Bath House would be graduated into eighteen units of 1¼
feet. The position of the hearth could be struck off with
absolute precision in the sequence 7 · 4 · 7; the position of
the bath tubs, with their diameter of three submodules, in
the sequence 2 · 3 · 2 within the squares of seven submodules
left in the four corners.
There are four or five more buildings on the Plan—not
counting several smaller areas here and there—in which the
submodule appears to have been employed (Abbot's
House, House for Distinguished Guests, cloisters of the
Infirmary and the Novitiate, and possibly the Refectory),
but to interpret how exactly it was used in each case is
difficult because the module is so small. A distance of 1¼
feet on the Plan amounts to not much more than twice the
thickness of the stroke of the quill with which the Plan was
drawn. Since the lines were traced without the aid of a
straightedge, even the slightest irregularity in the movement
of the hand would tend to blur the intent of the
original scheme. Therefore, rather than weakening the
argument by interpreting details which may be susceptible
to different solutions, I should like to confine myself to
establishing that this module was used by focusing on
those areas in which its existence can be clearly demonstrated.
