§ 59.

Having thus traced the position of the various buildings in the normal cloister-plan, we may consider the features peculiar to cloisters of the Cistercian order—features for which the internal arrangement of their churches have in some degree prepared us. It has been pointed out by Mr Micklethwaite that the plan of the Cistercian cloister is indicated by the order in which the buildings are directed to be visited in the Sunday procession—viz. chapter-house, parlour, dorter, rere-dorter, warming-house, frater, kitchen, cellarer's building. It will be observed that the parlour in this list comes between the chapter-house and dorter, and was therefore on the further side of the chapter-house from the church. On the other hand, although at Furness and Waverley the chapter-house directly joins the south transept of the church, there was in most Cistercian houses an intervening building. The ground-floor of this, however, was not a passage—for the way to the graveyard was through the doorway in the opposite transept—but was divided into two parts by a transverse wall. The eastern division, entered from the transept, was a vestry (vestiarium): the western, entered from the cloister, was probably the library (librarium), outside which, in the west wall of the transept, was the book-cupboard (armarium commune), a wainscoted recess in which the books wanted for constant use in cloister were kept. At Furness, where the chapter-house was entered by a short vestibule, the entrance-arch was flanked by two similar arches, each of which opened into a rectangular apartment: these rooms probably formed the library. In the later middle ages the partition-wall between the library and vestry was taken down at Fountains, and the double chamber was converted into a passage. The books appear to have been removed into closets formed by enclosing the western bays of the north and south alleys of the chapter-house.