The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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MEDIEVAL EXAMPLES |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
MEDIEVAL EXAMPLES
A fairly accurate picture of these smoke and air hole LOUVER ON COLLAPSING BARN
coverings may be obtained from some of the old engravings
of early English college halls, for instance, those of Oxford's
New College (fig. 361) and Magdalen College (fig. 362), as
shown in David Loggan's illustratious Oxonia Illustrata of
1675.[235]
New College Hall, the oldest of the surviving college
halls of Oxford, was built between 1378-1386 by William
of Wykeham. Magdalen College was founded in 1448 by
William of Waynflete, but its buildings were not completed
until 1480. Both these halls were built during a period when
new discoveries in the technique of roof construction made
it possible to dispense with the two rows of roof-supporting
posts which formerly divided the hall into a nave and two
364. NEAR BENICIA, CALIFORNIA
cover the space in a single span but also to lift the roof upon
walls of considerable height. Yet even in this new and more
fashionable hall, which permitted large windows, the traditional
opening in the roof above the hearth was retained
as the principal exit for smoke. The roof of the hall of
Magdalen College shows what extraordinary dimensions
these openings could obtain.
The medieval term for these smoke holes is fumerium
("smoke hole") or lovarium (identical with Old French
louvert, "opening"). The so-called Liberate Rolls of King
Henry III, issued in 1216 and 1272 (verbal directive for
repair and construction of houses owned by the crown)
make frequent reference to these devices.[236]
Loggan's engravings
of the halls of New College and Magdalen College
show how these smoke holes were covered by a simple
saddle roof, which looks like a portion of the main roof cut
out and raised over the hole. In Loggan's Oxonia Illustrata
saddle-like louvers appear only on the roofs of the earlier
college halls. On the roofs of the later halls the saddle-like
louver was replaced by a flèche or lantern, a Gothic development
and one which the author of the Plan of St. Gall
is not likely to have envisaged.[237]
365. JEAN LE PRINCE. LES LAVANDIÈRES, 1770, PARIS
ÉCOLE DES BEAUX-ARTS, COLLECTION ARMAND-VALTON
(AFTER LE PAYSAGE FRANCAIS. 1926, PL. LV)
The saddle-like version is the simpler and, unquestionably,
the older form, and this type of fumerium is in my
opinion what the author of the Plan had in mind when he
used the term testu.
Extracts of the "Liberate Rolls" of King Henry III are published
in Turner, 1877, 181ff. For passages that bear directly on the subject,
compare in particular, Roll 32, ibid., 216-17: "The keeper of the manor
of Woodstock is ordered . . . to make a hearth [astrum] of free-stone,
high and good, in the chamber above the wine-cellar in the great court,
and a great louver over the said hearth; and to make a door under the
door of Edward the king's son, and two great louvers [lovaria] in the
queen's chamber. . . ." Roll 28, ibid., 201, to the keepers of the works
at Woodstock: "And make also in our great hall at Woodstock a certain
great louver [fumerium]"; Roll 30, ibid., 209-10: "The sheriff of Southhampton
is ordered . . . to paint and gild the heads on the dais in the
king's great hall there, and to cover the louvers [fumericios] on it with
lead"; Roll 35, ibid., 234: "The sheriff of Wiltshire is ordered to re-roof
the queen's chapel, and to repair the louver [fumatorium] above the
king's hall at Clarendon which is injured by the wind"; Roll 36, ibid.,
234-35: "The king to the sheriff of Nottingham. We command you to
block up the cowled windows [fenestras culiciatas] on the south side of
the great hall of our castle of Nottingham, and to cover them externally
with lead; and make a certain great louver [fumerium] on the same hall,
and cover it with lead."
The earliest flèche-shaped lantern over the smoke hole of a medieval
hall known to me is that of Westminster Hall, "an exact copy of the
original from the end of the fourteenth century"; see Parker, 1882, 39.
For further specimens, see Atkinson, 1937, articles "Louver" and
"Lantern," also 122, fig. 118; and Clapham and Godfrey, n.d., 131 and
figs. 50 and 56 (turret-louver of Crosby Hall, 1466).
| The Plan of St. Gall | |