By Harold Brakspear, F.S.A. 229 
the other third contains the pit of the garderobes 
through which ran the main drain of the abbey. 
The chamber is entered by a segmental-headed 
doorway from the warming-house and another 
doorway further east in the same wall from the 
court between the eastern range and the infirmary. 
At either end was a tall square-headed loop, 94 
feet high, and 74 inches wide. The western one 
has been partly destroyed in the 16th century by 
the insertion of a shorter and wider window in 
the lower part and the upper part walledup. The 
inside sill appears to have had window seats 
similar to the warming-house. The’ eastern 
loop! is perfect and the sill had no window seats. 
Over the drain in the north-east corner was a 
garderobe within a segmental-headed recess. The 
chamber is now divided into two parts by a cross 
Fig. 7. 
Loop at east end of 1 
rere-dorter subvault. wall, erected to carry the east wall of the ex- 
tended dorter above, and there is a plain arched 
doorway in its north end. 
The external angles of the building have flat pilaster buttresses. 
What use this basement was put to is most uncertain, but part, 
probably, was a store for fuel to supply the warming-house fire. 
The rere-dorter would originally have been entered by a doorway 
in its south wall at the end of the centre passage of the dorter, and 
the whole north wall would have been occupied by garderobes over 
the drain. ‘And every seate and particion was of wainscott, close 
of either syde, verie decent, so that one of them could not see one 
another, when they weare in that place.” ? 
In the 14th century the dorter, as before described, was continued 
northward, incorporating the western part of the rere-dorter, thus 
cutting off more than half the accommodation it formerly contained. 
It is difficult to say if this reduced number of garderobes was 
1 At one time a transom has been inserted in this at half height, but 
subsequently removed. 
> Rites of Durham, xliii.. p. 72. 
