The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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| VI. |
 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
V. 14
FACILITIES FOR STORAGE AND
THRESHING OF GRAIN
V.14.1
THE MAIN GRANARY
Between the Great Collective Workshop and the Gardener's
House is a large Granary (fig. 431) for storing the annual
harvest and threshing the grain:
Frugibus hic instat cunctis labor excutiendis
Here is pursued the labor of threshing the entire
harvest
The draftsman takes great care to define the two complementary
functions of this building: the first, with an
inscription, "barn, i.e., storehouse for the annual harvest
of grain" (horreum um repositio fructuü annaliū);[462]
the second,
by designating a cross-shaped area of ground as "the area
where grain and chaff are threshed" (area in qua triturant'
grana et paleae).
The Granary is 47½ feet wide and 90 feet long. Its axis
runs from south to north. The building has only one
entrance, in the middle of its western long wall; it is a
double-winged door wide enough to allow the loaded
wagons to enter. It is not likely that a barn of these dimensions
would have been covered by a single span in the
ninth century. Even in the great monastic barns of the
thirteenth century the roof was carried by two rows of
freestanding inner posts when the width of the barn exceeded
25 feet. The draftsman must have taken these constructional
features for granted. Had the Granary been intended
to shelter human beings or animals as well, the floor plan
would have indicated the wall partitions separating the
spaces used for storing the harvest from the spaces reserved
for people or animals; and the course of these partitions
would, in turn, have given us a clue to the location of the
roof-supporting posts. But the barn of the Plan of St. Gall
had no such secondary function, except that a certain
amount of its floor space had to be kept vacant for threshing.
The draftsman makes this clear by carefully delineating
the surface area needed for this purpose: two threshing
lanes intersecting each other at right angles, each lane about
12 feet wide, i.e., the distance two rows of men would
require when flailing grain from opposite sides.
The layout of the Granary of the Plan of St. Gall teaches
us that broadside access must have been a very common
feature, if not the standard form, in Carolingian barn
construction. It was and remained throughout the entire
432. LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340). LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM, ADD. MS. 42130, fol. 173
[By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]
Three men stack bound sheaves of grain while two others carry sheaves to the pile. The work of cutting and sheaving grain is arduous; it must
be cut when the kernels are still in the barb and sufficiently moist so that the grain heads will not shatter and spill the harvest to the ground.
At this point the grain stalks are technically "green", and too tough to scythe, but must be hand cut with sickles.
English barn construction. In medieval France and in the
medieval and post-medieval dwelling barns of Lower Saxony
the entrances were invariably in the gable walls. In the
Lowlands and in southern Germany—as a glance at the
engravings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder or the watercolors
of Albrecht Dürer (figs. 335; 336) show—the two types are
mixed.
A typical English parallel comparable in size to the
Granary of the Plan of St. Gall is the priory barn of Little
Wymondley, Hertfordshire (fig. 434A-C)[463]
, probably dating
from the first half of the thirteenth century. Other examples
of the same period, both English and Continental, were
discussed above on pp. 103ff. The earliest evidence, other
than the Plan of St. Gall, for monastic barns with broadside
entrances are the barns that the Dean and Chapter of the
cathedral of St. Paul's in London maintained on its outlying
estates in the counties of Hertfordshire, Essex, Middlesex,
and Surrey. They are described in lease agreements
dating from 1114 to 1155.[464]
A careful reading of these texts
makes it clear that traditionally the harvest was stored in
this type of barn by filling the bays closest to the gable walls
first and working from there toward the center of the
building, the center bay being left empty for the entry and
exit of the wagons. This center bay was thus the natural
place for threshing. In many of the surviving English
medieval barns these entrance bays are paved, either in
stone or with wooden planks, and were used for threshing
until the invention of modern harvesting machinery[465]
eliminated the need for any such provisions (cf. fig. 437).
433. LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340). LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM, ADD. MS. 42130, fol. 173v
[By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]
In moderate climates, sheaved grain may be stored in the field for a few days to many weeks. Sheaves are stacked upright and over them, a few
sheaves are splayed with grainheads down, to form a protective thatching that sheds occasional rain. In northern climates the sheaves had to be
under shelter long before the onset of autumn rains; hence the great size of the Plan's threshing barn. The cart of the Psalter, with three
horses and three men, does not exaggerate the weight of the sheaves nor the labor required to load them.
Our reconstruction of the Granary of the Plan (fig. 435AE)
is not modeled after any particular example. We have
chosen a type that might have been found anywhere at any
time during the Middle Ages. We have given it a roof with
rafters of uniform scantling and hipped bays at the end,
because of the restraining effect such lean-to's exert on
any tendency of such a roof to give way under longitudinal
stresses. We could also have reconstructed it as a purlin
roof, analogous to Little Wymondley, except for the curved
arch and wind braces of this building which are typically
English and have no parallels on the Continent.
434.C LITTLE WYMONDLEY, HERTFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND. PRIORY BARN
FIRST HALF OF THE 15TH CENTURY
EXTERIOR VIEW FROM THE SOUTHWEST
A classical example of a medieval monastic barn of England, its purlin roof is hipped over the terminal bays; two transeptal porches give
access to the center bay. The barn does not, as we formerly believed, date to the 13th century when the priory was founded, but was rebuilt in
the 15th century on the site of an earlier building; some beams from previous structure were reused to make this one. Had the Granary of the
Plan been built, it would have resembled this one in many details.
LITTLE WYMONDLEY, HERTFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND. PRIORY BARN
434.B
434.A
GROUND PLAN AND LONGITUDINAL SECTION SCALE INCH EQUALS ONE FOOT [1:192]
At 100 feet long and 38 feet wide, Little Wymondley is only 9 feet narrower, and 10 feet longer, than the Granary of the Plan. Eight roof
trusses divide it into a nave, 23 feet wide, and two aisles, 7½ feet wide. The nine bays are 11 feet deep except for the wagon bay at 12 feet,
which serves as entrance and as threshing floor after the harvest is in.
The trusses supporting the roof are connected lengthwise by roof plates tenoned into the principal posts immediately below the tie beams; and in
the roof slopes by two tiers of purlins. The trusses are locked longitudinally by arched braces into principal posts and at the level of the purlins.
PLAN AND LONGITUDINAL SECTION SCALE INCH EQUALS ONE FOOT [1:192] GRAPHIC SCALE, 408.D, PAGE 172 FOR COLOR PLAN SEE P. 214
435.B
435.A
In all major medieval barns the center aisle was considerably broader than the outer aisles by at least twice as much; but they rarely exceeded a
width of 21-23 feet. The depth of the bays ranged in general between 11 and 13 feet. Barns the size of Great Coxwell (figs. 349-351) and
Parçay-Meslay (figs. 352-355) are exceptions; because of their unusual size they depended on heavy masonry walls and gables.
A building 90 feet long would most probably be comprised of seven bays each 13 feet deep. We have assigned to the Granary nave a width of
22½ feet and to each aisle, 12½ feet. The short arm of the paved threshing floor is edged, in the nave, by unpaved areas ca. 5½ feet wide where
men might stand while threshing.
PLAN OF ST. GALL. GRANARY. AUTHORS' RECONSTRUCTION
435.C
435.D
435.E
TRANSVERSE SECTION, SOUTH ELEVATION AND WEST ELEVATION
Enough is known about the history and protohistory of the medieval barn to allow a safe assumption that a building 47½ feet wide and 90 feet
long would have been an aisled structure. But there is no reason to assume that any part would have been of masonry except for the foundations
and a shallow plinth on which to foot the upright timbers and protect them from dampness. In the majority of medieval and prehistoric
buildings of this type the roof was hipped over the terminal bays (compare prehistoric examples, figs. 295-97, 313-14, and medieval barns and
houses portrayed by Dürer, fig. 335, and by Bruegel, fig. 336).
436. PLAN OF ST. GALL. BREWERS' GRANARY
The location of the Brewers' Granary (30) next to the Monks'
Bake and Brewhouse (9), the Mortar (28) and Drying Kiln (29),
and its proximity to the Bake and Brewhouse of the Hospice for
Pilgrims and Paupers (32) is ideal, since the work performed in all
of these installations represents separate and successive stages in the
making of beer: threshing, crushing, parching and brewing. If the
threshing floor of the Brewers' Granary seems disproportionately
large, it may owe to the fact that much less grain needed to be
stored there for any length of time, although the work of threshing
for brewing no doubt was continuous (cf. fig. 431. X).
The Granary of the Plan of St. Gall was the storage
place, I should imagine, not only for the harvest yielded
by the fields that the monastery worked with the aid of its
own serfs, but also for the revenues obtained through the
tithing of land leased out to tenants.[466]
The volume of the
annual revenues derived from any of these sources was a
carefully regulated matter. Abbot Adalhard of Corbie, who
had to take care of a monastic community of an average of
300 souls, furnished a detailed account of the manner in
which the supply of grain was handled in his own monastery.
The total income in grain "well winnowed and husked"
(spelta bene uentilata et mundata) was 750 baskets per year
(two baskets per day plus 20 additional baskets for safety).[467]
Abbot Adalhard informs us that two baskets average ten
modii, each modius yielding 30 loaves of bread; two baskets
thus giving assurance of 300 loaves per day. He establishes
how many sheaves make up a modius of grain, allowing for
the variation in quality of grain obtained from different
fields, and he draws attention to the detrimental effect of
such variance on the attempt to attain an accurate system
of measurement. He points out that the straw ought always
to be delivered with the grain, as it, too, has uses, and he
rules that when places are too far away for the tithe to be
carted in, the villages lying near should pay double tithes
and then collect from their neighbors farther out. In conclusion,
he admonished the Porter, who is in charge of all
these operations, to keep an accurate inventory of all these
deliveries.[468]
The symbol ·|· must be interpreted as id est; see Battelli, 1949,
114, and Cappelli, 1954, xxxiii, and 168. The symbol was mistakenly
read as vel by Willis, 1848, 112; Stephani, II, 1903, 52; Leclercq, in
Cabrol-Leclercq, 1924, col. 104; and Reinhardt, 1952, 14. Keller, 1844,
3, failed to list this line.
The barn of Little Wymondley belonged to Wymondley Priory,
which was founded during the reign of Henry II by Richard de Argentein,
lord of the manor of Great Wymondley, sometime before 1218.
See Victoria History of the Counties of England, Hertfordshire, III, 1912,
190. It lies immediately to the south of the Priory House and, in all
probability, is the original Priory Barn. Cf. Horn, 1963, 18ff. (Radiocarbon
measurements taken since these lines were written suggest that
the present barn dates from the fifteenth century and that it incorporates
in its extant frame of timbers a few reused beams of the original barn. Cf.
UCLA Radiocarbon Dates, VI, 485 (UCLA—1057 and 1058) and
Berger, 1970, 132-33.
Hale, 1858, 122-39. For further details on these barns, most of which
are described with such accuracy that they can be reconstructed on the
drawing board, see Horn, 1958, 11ff.; and Horn and Born, 1965, 11ff.
A notable example is the great tithe barn of Harmondsworth in
Middlesex, England; see Hartshorne, 1875, 416ff.; Royal Commission
on Historical Monuments, Middlesex, 1937, 61-62; Horn, 1958, 14;
and Horn, 1970, pp. 43-46.
The practice of tithing, i.e., of drawing in a tenth of the produce of
the land the monastery owned as well as tenth of all the animals raised
on this land, was begun by Pepin III and appears to have been his means
of giving some compensation to the Church for the economic losses they
had suffered before his time under the Merovingians; cf. Ganshof,
1960, 109; and Stutz, 1908.
Consuetudines Corbeienses, chap. 3, ed. Semmler, in Corp. cons. mon.,
I, 1963, 375; and translation, III, 106.
V.14.2
THE BREWERS' GRANARY
The Monks' Brewery has its own granary with bins for the
storage of grain and other ingredients used in brewing.
This facility is attached to the south end of the House of
the Coopers and Wheelwrights and lies directly between
the Monks' Bake and Brew House and the buildings that
contain the machinery indispensable in the process of
brewing, the Drying Kiln and the Mortar. The Brewers'
Granary is a square, 32½ feet by 35 feet, internally divided
into a cross-shaped floor, which leaves four storage bins in
the corners (fig. 436).
The purpose of the building is explained by the following
title:
granarium ubi mandatu frumentum seru & ur & qđ
ad ceruisā praeparatur[469]
The granary where the cleansed grain is kept and
[where] what goes to make beer is prepared
The title implies that the grain used for brewing was subjected
to special cleaning and husking practices, which is
also suggested by the above-quoted passage from the
Statutes of Adalhard of Corbie, where it is stipulated that
the grain should be delivered to the monastery "well
winnowed and husked." The other ingredients referred
437. LUTTRELL PSALTER (1340). LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM, ADD. MS. 42130, fol. 74v
[By courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum]
Two men with flails thresh sheaved grain. Throughout the Middle Ages and into modern times the work of harvesting grain was done by hand
in the separate and successive steps of cutting, bundling, stacking, carting, storing, and threshing. Today these operations are performed
simultaneously by powered combine harvesters, allowing one man to reap and thresh many acres in a day; likewise, pressure balers reduce the
space required for storing straw to only a fraction of that needed in pre-industrial times. The efficient operation of this versatile machinery
spelled death to the medieval barn, the maintenance of which has become an economic liability (cf. Charles and Horn, 1973, 5ff).
reception and distribution of which, in the monastery of
Corbie, Adalhard devoted an entire paragraph.[470]
The storage bins in the four corners of the Brewers'
Granary are designated as "repositories of these same
things—likewise" (repositoria eorundem rerum—similiter).
There is no unequivocal reference to threshing in the
inscriptions of this building, unless the word seru&tur be
interpreted to imply this activity, but the cruciform shape
of the floor space left between the bins, by analogy with the
threshing floor in the large Granary, suggests that the grain
used in brewing might have been threshed in its own
granary.
PLAN OF ST. GALL. DRYING KILN, MORTAR, AND MILL
438.
6. MONKS' REFECTORY
7. MONKS' CELLAR
8. MONKS' KITCHEN
9. MONKS' BAKE & BREWHOUSE
25. GREAT COLLECTIVE WORKSHOP
26. ANNEX OF GREAT COLLECTIVE WORKSHOP
27. MILL
28. MORTAR
29. DRYING KILN
30. HOUSE OF COOPERS & WHEEL WRIGHTS AND BREWERS' GRANARY
33. HOUSE FOR HORSES AND OXEN AND THEIR KEEPERS
31. HOSPICE FOR PILGRIMS AND PAUPERS
32. KITCHEN, BAKE AND BREWHOUSE FOR PILGRIMS AND PAUPERS
A. FENCE OR WALL SEPARATING "OUTSIDERS" FROM "INNER" ACTIVITIES
B. FENCE OR WALL EXTENDING TO EXTERNAL BOUNDARY
438.X SITE PLAN
The alignment of installations for grinding, crushing, and parching grain (27, 28, 29) at the southern edge of the monastry complex appears to
have been purposeful. If the topography of the site were ideal, with stream and land gradient permitting the development of water power, these
facilities on the Plan could all have been water driven. (A reconstruction of the presumptive waterways of the Plan is suggested, I, 74, fig.
53; and Horn, 1975, 228, fig. 4.
The Drying Kiln, Mortar, and Mill are sited next to the Monks' Bake and Brewhouse (9) and the Monks' Kitchen (8), and near the Bake
and Brewhouse of the Pilgrims and Paupers (32). Traffic patterns and usage demonstrated that the location of mills and mortars was carefully
planned. The Monks' Bakery and Kitchen required flour from the Mill; the Mortar produced crushed grain for brewing and for many other
dishes basic to the monks' diet. The Drying Kiln was used not only for parching grain but for drying fruit.
The noise of the mortars and mill would also have made it desirable to locate them at a distance from the center of monastic activities.
| The Plan of St. Gall | |