V.3.2
PLACEMENT OF ENTRANCE
In the excavated Germanic all-purpose houses there
appears to be considerable variability in the location of the
entrances. The houses of the Plan of St. Gall, by contrast,
show a definite bias in favor of lateral accessibility. Only in
two out of thirty-one guest and service buildings do the
entrance or entrances lie in the end walls, the House of the
Fowlkeeper and his crew and the large anonymous building
in the western tract of the monastery. In all the others the
principal entrance is in the middle of one of the long walls
and it is balanced in the opposite side of the house by an
exit giving access to a privy. Facing each other in opposite
pairs, the entrance and exit give the structure a transverse
axis running at right angles to the basic longitudinal orientation
of the house. This is by no means a singular property
of the guest and service buildings of the Plan of St. Gall,
and I must refute my critics at this point for having suggested
that I have derived an "essentially central type" house
from one that is organized in an "essentially axial or
longitudinal manner."[164]