V.12.2
HOUSE OF THE GARDENER & HIS CREW
The House of the Gardener (fig. 426) measures 35 feet by
52½ feet. It consists of "the house itself" (ipsa domus), i.e.,
the common living room with its central fireplace[439]
and three
aisles attached to it, one to the east, one to the north, and
one to the south. The west wall of the center room remains
exposed and contains the principal entrance. The southern
aisle of the house serves as "dwelling of the gardener"
(mansio hortolani). The eastern aisle is divided into two
rooms, which are designated as "sleeping quarters for the
servants" (cubilia famulorum). They are separated from one
another by a vestibule which gives access to the Garden.
The northern aisle of the house is "a storage place for the
garden tools and for the vegetable seeds" (hic ferram̄ta
reseruant' & seminaria olerū).
Abbot Adalhard in his manual on the economic management
of the monastery of Corbie gives us an account of the
kind of tools we may expect to find in this room; he also
tells us by whom they are supplied and kept in repair:
The gardener . . . ought to receive all iron tools from the chamberlain,
who should supervise the smiths according to the custom of the
community. If any of the tools should be broken, let the gardener
show them to the chamberlain and let him have them repaired or
give out another metal appliance and take in the broken one.
Furthermore, those tools must then be repaired by the chamberlain
in whatever way may be necessary. And for cultivating the field or
for carrying out any other needs, let each one have six hoes [fussorios],
two spades [bessos], three straight axes [secures], an adze
[dolatorium], two augers [taratra] large and small, one chisel
[scalprum], one gulbium (unidentifiable), two sickles [falcilia], one
scythe [falcem], two trunci (possibly "handles" for axes and
scythes), one coulter [cultrum], one scerum (possibly "shears"),
and other instruments kept in the chamberlain's office, as winnowing
fans [uanni], casting shovels [banstae], or other things of this
sort.
In our reconstruction of the Gardener's House (fig. 427,
A-F) we have kept the roof line of the peripheral spaces on
the same level, which leaves the upper parts of the walls on
the two narrow sides of the center space exposed as timber
framed gables. Another alternative would have been to lead
the rafters on the two narrow sides of the house up to a
cross piece near the ridge of the main roof, as we have done
in all of the larger guest and service buildings where hipped
roofs have clear constructional advantages. In small houses,
such as the Gardener's House, the solution here suggested
might have been the simpler one, provided that the rafters
of the main roof were protected against longitudinal displacement
by some secondary provision, such as a center
purlin framed into collar pieces. This is a very common
stabilizing device in English roof construction of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries (a typical example is St.
Mary's Hospital in Chichester, above fig. 342). Whether
we can expect it to have been used on the continent in
Carolingian times is another question.
