The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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OTHER MONASTIC PRIVIES
AND WATER-FLUSHED CHANNELS FOR WASTE |
| VI. |
| VI. 1. |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
OTHER MONASTIC PRIVIES
AND WATER-FLUSHED CHANNELS FOR WASTE
The remains of many other structures of this kind, dating
from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, may be found
in other English monasteries, such as Kirkstall, Fountains,
Lewes Priory, Rievaulx, Roche, and Byland; an unusually
fine Continental specimen exists in the Abbey of Maubuisson.[683]
502. CHRISTCHURCH, CANTERBURY, ENGLAND, PLAN OF WATERWORKS (CA. 1165)
MONKS' PRIVY (DETAIL, ACTUAL SIZE)
[By courtesy of the Trustees of Trinity College Library, Cambridge University]
The plan, probably drawn by Wibert (d. 1167), who engineered the system, shows the privy lying at the southern side of the CURIA at right
angles to the Norman dormitory (DORMITORIUM). With an external length of 155 feet (more than double the length of the monks' privy at
Cluny), and a height of 35 feet, it was an imposing structure.
The artist took license in portraying the Christchurch privy as a detached building; remaining fragments of the masonry of dormitory and
privy show that in reality a portion of its western gable wall butted against the dormitory and was accessible from it through a connecting
vestibule (fig. 503.A).
The privy was water-flushed down its length by means of a drainage ditch that, on the drawing, is shown to run parallel to and outside the
structure; in actuality this channel passed beneath it (fig. 503. B, C) and emptied into the fosse of the city wall.
After the dissolution of the monasteries in England by Henry VIII, the privy was converted into a common hall for minor canons and officers
of the choir. So it remained with slight modifications until 1850, when it was taken down. Some of the masonry of the fosse and many of the
arches that supported the privy seats (fig. 503.C) are part of the surviving ruins and can still be seen.
The complete plan of the Christchurch waterworks is reproduced in Volume I of this work, pp. 70-71, and is part of a discussion of schematic
waterways as they might apply to Christchurch; the discussion includes a schematic speculation of watercourses that might be applicable to the
St. Gall site (I, 72, and 74, fig. 53).
503.A CANTERBURY, CHRISTCHURCH MONASTERY, MONKS' PRIVY. PLAN
[after Willis, 1868, fig. 12]
The designations are misleading. The "Third Dormitory" was not a hall for sleeping, but a latrine. The "Second Dormitory" may have served
as sleeping quarters for certain conventual officers, such as sacristan, chamberlain, cellerar, and superior.
cleansed by running water diverted from a natural stream
at some point above the monastery and returned to it with
the waste further down the valley. There is no doubt in
my mind that the majority of the privies shown on the
Plan of St. Gall were cleansed in this manner, although
the author of the Plan refrained from delineating the course
of such a water system. What he had in mind can be
elicited from the fact that the majority of his privies are
sited in such a manner that they could be flushed in
succession by a drainage channel connecting them in a
straight course.[684]
| The Plan of St. Gall | |