A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



in Rites. The ' strong iron grate ' within 

 also remains. Here the muniments of the con- 

 vent were icept until quite recent times, when 

 they were removed to the room over the gate- 

 house. In the cloister ' over against the trea- 

 sury house door ' the novices were taught, for 

 whom there was a ' fair stall of wainscott ' and 

 their master had a seat opposite on the south side 

 of the doorway."' 



The Common House had ' a fyre keapt in 

 yt all wynter, for the mounckes to cume and 

 warme them at, being allowed no fyre but 

 that onely,' and belonging to it was a garden 

 and bowling alley, ' on the backside of the said 

 house towards the water, for the novyces 

 sume tymes to recreat themeselves.'" All traces 

 of the fireplace, as well as of the dividing walls, 

 have disappeared, but the garden and bowHng 

 alley still exist in a modern form on the west 

 side. The common house appears to have been 

 entered at its south end from the infirmary 

 passage, on the other side of which was the 

 ' great cellar ' of Rius entered from a doorway, 

 now blocked, at the foot of the stair to the 

 loft ; the buttery was probably in the end bay. 

 The infirmary passage occupied the eighth bay 

 from the north, but the doorway from the cloister 

 is a later insertion with a single continuous 

 moulded order ; the passage walls have dis- 

 appeared and a wide modern opening has been 

 made in the west wall. The present arrange- 

 ment is that the eight southern bays of the sub- 

 vault form a single apartment, in which (at the 

 north end) are preserved a large number of 

 mediaeval grave covers and moulded and carved 

 stones of various kinds from the cathedral and 

 other churches in the county.^ The two bays 

 north of this (third and fourth from north) are 

 now used as vestries for the choir men and boys, 

 with a single modern doorway, and that next 

 the treasury is the minor canons' vestry, the 

 doorway of which has a flat four-centred head 

 in one stone.*' 



The entrance to the DORTER or DORMI- 

 TORT was at the north end by a stair from the 

 cloister, close to the church, in the recess formed 

 by the projection of the south-west tower. 

 The doorway and the wall in which it is set 

 belong to the 12th-century west range, and a 

 round-headed opening, now blocked, stiU remains 

 in a portion of this older walling on the west 



«« Rliet, 84. 



6' Ibid. 88. 



•*Greenwell, op. cit. loi. The south end serves 

 as a public way from the cloister to the outer court 

 (College Green) by a modern doorway in the south 

 wall. 



*' It is a restoration, but apparently is a copy of the 

 old doorway, perhaps of early 16th-century date. 

 Carter's plan shows a door here, but not in the fourth 

 bay, where the choir vestry door now is. 



side overlooking the garden. The doorway has 

 a semicircular arch of three moulded orders, the 

 two inner on jamb shafts with cushion capitals, 

 the outer resting on extended imposts. The 

 whole surface has been pared down and the 

 label and outer order cut away. 



The dorter was divided by wainscot partitions 

 into a series of cubicles, or ' little chambers,' 

 with a passage down the middle. Each cubicle 

 was lighted by a window'" and contained a desk, 

 while in the wall above on each side were widely 

 spaced two-light pointed windows lighting the 

 whole of the apartment. The lower windows 

 are square-headed and of two trefoiled lights 

 divided by a transom, and all are restorations ; 

 the upper windows have cinquef oiled lights, 

 vertical tracery and labels.'^ At the south end 

 is a modern pointed window of five lights below 

 a plain flat-pitched gable, and the side walls 

 have embattled parapets on corbel tables. The 

 dorter still retains its original open roof with 

 plain oak principals, barely touched by the axe,'^ 

 wall pieces on stone corbels, and struts, the 

 span of which is 41 ft. The upper windows occur 

 in every third bay. The novices occupied the 

 south end, ' having eight chambers on each 

 side . . . not so close nor so warme as the 

 other chambers,' there being no windows to give 

 light ' but as it came in at the foreside.'" The 

 middle passage was paved with ' fine tyled 

 stone,' which in part remained till past the 

 middle of the 19th century,'* and at either end 

 of the dorter was a large four-square cresset 

 stone each with a dozen bowls. The sub-prior's 

 chamber was ' the first in the dorter for 

 seinge of good order keapt.' '^ A doorway at the 

 north end, now blocked, opened into the church 

 under the south-west tower, and led probably 

 by a wooden gallery by another doorway into 

 the tower staircase and so to the church itself,'* 

 The original fittings have disappeared and the 

 room is now used as a part of the Chapter 

 Library, bookcases being placed along the walls 

 below the upper windows. The room also 

 contains a series of Roman altars and inscribed 

 stones from Lanchester and other stations in the 

 county, and on the line of the Roman wall, a 



'" ' Every windowe serving for one chamber, by 

 reason the particion betwixt every chamber was close 

 wainscotted one from another ' ; Rites, 85. 



'1 The lower windows are without labels. ' The 

 present windows to a great extent occupy the places 

 of the old ones ' ; Rites, Fowler's notes, 265. 

 There are fifteen lower windows facing the cloister and 

 six upper ones. 



'2 Greenwell, op. cit. 102. 



"i^ Rites, 85. 



'* Greenwell, writing in 1879, says ' until not many 

 years ago ' ; op. cit. 102. 



"1^ Rites, 86. 



"Greenwell, op. cit. 101. 



130 



