The Plan of St. Gall :: :: University of Virginia Library

In reconstructing the architectural shell of this interesting
building we have a wide range of choices. One thinks
immediately, of course, of those masterpieces of functional
construction—the medieval kitchens of Marmoutier (fig.
222), Fontevrault (fig. 223), and Glastonbury, or the kitchen
of the palace of Saumur, the chimneys of which can be
spotted on the charming September picture of the Très
Riches Heures de Jean de France.[199] These are the buildings
Gruber had in mind when he reconstructed the Monks'
Kitchen of the Plan of St. Gall as a masonry structure with

p. II. 21

a large pyramidal roof (fig. 282).[201] On the opposite end of
our range of choices there are such simple wooden sheds
as the one shown in the picture of the bakehouse of the

p. II. 135

Behaim Codex in Kraków (fig. 387).[203] The Kitchen of the
Plan of St. Gall may have belonged to the latter type. A
third and perhaps more likely possibility is that its walls
were built in masonry but its roof framed in timber. An
interesting example of this variant survives in the kitchen
of the Bishop's Palace at Chichester (Sussex; fig. 224),[204] an
early example of hammer beam construction, dating probably
from the beginning of the fourteenth century.[205]

[199]

With regard to the kitchens of Marmoutier and Fontevrault, see
Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire, under "cuisine." For Glastonbury, see
Willis, 1886, and Bond, 1925; for the kitchen of the castle of Saumur,
see Durrieu, 1904, pl. IX, facing 150.

[201]

Gruber, 1952, 25, fig. 15.

[203]

Winkler, 1941, pl. 4.

[204]

With regard to the kitchen of the Bishop's Palace at Chichester, see
Hannah, 1909, 3; VHC, Sussex III, 1935, 148; Wood, 1935, 390;
Emmery, 1958, 195. The picture of the interior of the kitchen, shown in
fig. 224, is from a painting made around 1850 by George Barry. The
upper part of the roof was closed in with a ceiling in 1929.

[205]

A date in the early fourteenth century is suggested by the fact that
the braces that support the hammer beams of the kitchen of the Bishop's
Palace at Chichester have certain similarities with the timbers that brace
the frame of St. Mary's Hospital in Chichester (end of the thirteenth
century). For St. Mary's Hospital, see Dollman, 1885, pl. 21 and 22;
idem, II, 1863, pl. 26 and 27; VHC, Sussex, III, 1907, 100-102; Ostendorf,
1908, 100; Powell, 1955; Arch. Journ., XCII, 1935, 394, fig. 2
(plan).