University of Virginia Library

V.16.3

DUPLICATION OF DESIGN
AND EQUIPMENT

SUBTLE DIFFERENTIATIONS IN DESIGN

In the monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall there are
three bake and brew houses, one for the Monks, one for
the House for Distinguished Guests and one for the House
for Pilgrims and Paupers (figs. 462-464). The maker of
the Plan was sensitive to varying demands upon the baking
and brewing facilities in the St. Gall community. While
the layout, design, and equipment of the three bake and
brew houses of the Plan are virtually identical, planned
variations exist in both size and details, in order to accommodate
different traffic through each installation.

The differences are subtle yet persuasively illustrate the
compositional flexibility of this house type and its ability
to adapt with ease to specific needs by an addition to the
principal space of one or several peripheral rooms. The
Bake and Brew House of the Pilgrims and Paupers, with

[ILLUSTRATION]

461. CANTERBURY. PLAN OF WATERWORKS FOR CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY

DRAWN ABOUT 1165

DETAIL SHOWING MONKS' BAKE AND BREW HOUSE

[by courtesy of the Trustees of Trinity College Library, Cambridge University]

The drafters of the Plan of St. Gall considered the association of the crafts of baking and brewing to be both ideal and a practical necessity.
The Christchurch drawing demonstrates, together with many other documentary and archaeological sources, that this association became a
standard trait of monastic architecture in the ensuing two centuries. The plan of the waterworks of Christchurch, Canterbury, shows the
conventual buildings in the state they attained under Bishop Lanfranc (d. 1089), after the Saxon church and monastery were destroyed by fire
in 1067.

The bake and brewhouse of this new monastery was built in the large open court (CURIA), to the north of the claustral compound. It was a
large rectangular building, 40 feet wide and 170 feet long, running with axis parallel to the precinct and city walls bounding the monastery to
the north at a distance of 70 and 100 feet respectively. The building was divided transversely by an internal wall into two unequal sections; the
western and larger of these, covering a surface area of 40 by 110 feet served as Brewhouse (BRACINUM), the eastern and smaller one, measuring
40 by 60 feet, as Bakery (PISTRINUM). A few feet to the east and co-axial with the bake and brewhouse, stood a granary (GRANARIUM)
which, because of its small dimensions, (40 by 40 feet) can only have been a brewers' granary; it is in fact thus referred to in documents of 1803
and 1313 (granarium in bracino, pro novo bracino cum granario; cf. Willis, 1968, 150). Christchurch Monastery had only one bake and
brewhouse. The Plan of St. Gall shows three (figs. 461-463) but the surface area of the Canterbury facility (6,800 square feet) almost equals
the combined surface area of the brewhouses of the Plan (7,120 square feet).

* The entire plan of Canterbury is shown in vol. I, 70, fig. 52.A.

only one aisle attached to its main space, was at 1,350
square feet (figs. 463 and 392-393) the smallest of the
installations, serving a constant but modest number of
travellers who received from the monks a fare almost as
simple as their own. On the other hand, the Bake and
Brew House for Distinguished Guests (figs. 396, 400, and
464), although only used occasionally, was at 2,636 square
feet the same size as the Bake and Brew House of the
Monks. This provision of a seemingly too-large space may
be accounted for by the recognition that a large progress
of nobles and their retainers might at times approach the
number of resident monks, with the added complication
of more sophisticated dietary demands of the worldly.

The baking and brewing facilities of the two guest
houses, for example, include cooking facilities, an acknowledgement
of the differing dietary requirements for guests
and monks. Thus, it is seen that the need for three separate
bake and brew houses in the monastery was unavoidable,
because of the different diets involved for the three classes
of men—fuedal lords, paupers and monks—who were to
be served by these separate facilities. Differentiation in the
type and quality of bread is well attested.[551] It is not unreasonable
to assume that similar distinctions entailed the
production of different types and qualities of beer. In an
article dealing with hops and its history Charles Dimont
points out that "it was the monks who began the classification
of beer by its strength into prima, secunda, and
tertia (which simplified into the categories `X', `XX'
and `XXX', are used even today) and that this tradition
of producing different qualities of beer was carried on in
the universities and colleges which brewed their own
specialities such as `Chancellor', `Audit', and `Archdeacon'."[552]

The Bake and Brew House for Distinguished Guests is
provided with additional space, apparently for storage, in
the form of two lean-to's on the entrance side. Despite the
larger numbers it served, the oven of this installation is
no larger than that in the Bake and Brew House for Pilgrims
and Paupers; at 7½ feet it is smaller in diameter by
one fourth than the monks' oven (dia. = 10 feet), but
therefore more quickly and easily brought to baking heat
after standing cold during periods of disuse. The relation
in the subordinate installations of baking to brewing
facilities is such that the ovens could have served to control
the temperatures for successful brewing, as was likely done
in the Monks' Bake and Brew House, a discussion of which
follows.