On Evidences of the Plan of the Cloister Garth and Monastic Buildings of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, Now Known as Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

On Evidences of the Plan of the Cloister Garth and Monastic Buildings of the Priory of theHoly Trinity, Now Known as Christ Church Cathedral, DublinAuthor(s): Thomas DrewSource: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Polite Literature and Antiquities, Vol. 2 (1879- 1888), pp. 214-218Published by: Royal Irish AcademyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20651518 .

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214 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.

XXXVII.?On Evidences oe the Plan oe the Cloister Garth and

Monastic Buildings op the Priory of the Holy Trinity, now

known as Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. By Thomas

Drew, B.H.A., Cathedral Architect, 1882. (Plate XVI.)

[Read, November 13, 1882.]

The cloisters stood on the south side of Christ Church Cathedral, between the nave and the present railing in Christchurch-place. The abbey gateway stood exactly under the doorway of the present south west porch, but some ten feet below it. The chapter-house stood seven feet to the south from the south transept.

Eor many years the site and plan of the cloister garth and the surrounding monastic buildings, which must once have been a part of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, have been a matter of curious specula tion to me. The church alone has survived to our time. I knew it all before Mr. Henry Boe's great restoration. Every detail of that restoration, with its marvellously interesting revelations of the church's former plan, was familiar to me, as all the church is now. I had read

all that is known to be recorded of it, but without meeting the most slender clue to the history or existence of the former subsidiary buildings of the monastic establishment.

By Mr. George Edmund Street, R.A. (to whose marvellous instinct for the comparative anatomy, as I may term it, of a mediaeval building and profound architectural erudition we owe the re-creation of this per fect and unique twelfth and thirteenth century church, from merest shreds of evidence) the site or plan of the monastic buildings was untraced and uninvestigated. I know this from the interesting account of the restoration penned by this great architect himself, and left unpublished at his death, the proofs of which, before its coming publication, it has been my privilege to read. It has been a matter of great interest to me, following, longo intermllo indeed, so great a master in the care of this cathedral, to alight upon some threads of evidence, not only to identify the site of the monastic buildings, but to trace their plan with a bold hand, leaving but little conjectural of what goes to fill in the outlines.

I have long looked for even a hint to aid speculation as to whether the cloisters stood upon the north or south side of the church, as they indifferently do in the monastic plan. I inclined to surmise on the north, as nothing more unlikely than the south side as it exists, a steep declivity between Christchurch-place and the cathedral, as a site for the level of a cloister garth could have suggested itself. I had scarcely entertained a thought of looking for anything so improbable. How ever there is preserved in the cathedral, by some happy chance, a comparatively modern document, a map and survey of the cathedral

property, with a schedule, prepared by one John Sedding in 1761. It



Drew?On Christ Church Cathedral. 215

shows the old Four Courts, and the passage then colloquially known as "Hell," the Exchange, and, as the schedule quaintly sets forth

among other things, "the place where the Stocks is";1 it delineated the many houses and small tenement holdings in Skinner-row, now

swept away, and the two "yards" surrounded by shops and small booths intervening between these and the south side of the cathedral.

Looking at Sedding's map, the last thing that would strike most people would be to develop the plan of a monastery out of it. Views of the cathedral from the south-east, given by Grose in 1791, and drawn as late as 1821 by George Petrie, give a rude notion of what the

" Exchange

" was. It is at once recognizable as a mediaeval groined

building, and Sedding's schedule sets forth the chambers over it. I have no doubt those very ones offered by an advertisement in a Dublin paper of that time?

'' To let, apartments in Hell. N.B.?Well suited to a Lawyer."

Further information as to the "

Exchange "

was given me from a map, the accuracy and authenticity of which I cannot well doubt, from its internal evidence, although the sources from which it may have been compiled are a mystery.

Bound up in Kelly's new (and uncompleted) edition of Arch dall's Monasticon Hibernicum, vol. ii., is a map of Christ Church Cathe dral and precinct, evidently not drawn for this work. The text has no reference to it, and the reference figures on it are sought for in the body of the work in vain as having any meaning. I have, however, ascertained that this map was intended for a work by William Monck

Mason, never published. It would appear that his well-known history of St. Patrick's Cathedral was not intended to be a monograph, but the first instalment of a great and ambitious work, Hibernia Antiqua et Hodierna, being a Topographical Account of Ireland, and a History of all the Establishments in that Kingdom, Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Monas ticfc. 1 have the prospectus of the volume relating to Christ Church projected in 1819. This projected volume never saw the light, and the MSS. and raw material collected for it found their way to what is known as the Phillips collection, locked up from scholars at Chel tenham. The steel plates intended for it were sold at an auction in London, bought by Mr. Kelly, and inserted passim in his new Monas ticon Hibernicum, to adorn the work, merely. Mason's map gives the

Exchange as a four-bayed groined building. It scarcely needs a glance from anyone acquainted with the typical

monastic plan and its varieties to recognise this building as the ancient Chapter-house in its usual and expected place with reference to the church. It stands east and west, about seven feet away from the south

transept, and the vie^s above referred to show us the monks' dormi

tories over it. The passage that intervenes between the chapter-house

1 The Stocks are still preserved in the Cathedral




and transept in Sedding's map gives, where one would look for it, the staircase by which the monks passed from their dormitories to the church. Knowing that the south transept had been greatly altered in

1831, when the old door, brought from the north side, was inserted in the middle of it, I looked for a trace of the monks' door where it should be, and then found it plainly indicated by the built-in masonry to the left of the present doorway. Here were clues, absolutely determined, to point to the existence of cloisters on the south side.

To the south of the chapter-house, in most monastic plans, one

looks for the passage called the " slype." Here it is found clearly defined in the old plans, remembered by some still living citizens, and

familiarly known by the more modern name of "Hell," even so far

away as to Robert Burns. The lines have been often quoted:? " But this that I am gaun to tell, Which lately in a night befel, Is just as true as deil's in hell

Or Dublin city."

We know that next to the "slype" would come the kitchen, or

"calefactory", the day-room of the monks, its limits only wanting to be defined, and which Sedding's map supplies when studied.

This would have been all to be derived from Sedding's plan, but for another thread of evidence. I had occasion, in 1881, to cut a

deep drain across the cathedral precinct, on the south side, and I looked with interest for the uncovering of part of the walls of the old Four Courts.2 I found the walls where I crossed them exactly as

laid down in Sedding's plan, but found a remarkable difference in the walls themselves. The east and west walls of the old Court of Common Pleas did not go down to a deep foundation, but were borne above the peat stratum on great beams or cradles of massive oak. The

west wall of the King's Bench, however, was different. It was carried

down to a greater depth, to the solid foundation beneath the peat, and was an enormously solid mass of ancient masonry. Here I recognised an ancient wall of the monastery. I also laid bare and ascertained the

ancient level of the cloister garth, finding it about nine feet below the church floor, and nearly on the level of the floor of the crypt. This solved several problems of built-up doorways, steps, and approaches, which had puzzled everyone. The existence of a cloister garth at such a level, levelled for and scooped out in the side of a steep declivity,

was unexpected. A practical mind will at once infer the existence of a great re

taining wall somewhere that would be required to keep back the overhanging bank on the south side. Sedding's map at once indicates it. A narrow yard, or area?say four or five feet wide?which may

2 The Four Courts were built upon the site, and in part on the foundations of the monastic buildings and cloister garth by the Crown, in 1695 ; the Dean and

Chapter receiving ?10 per annum rent for the ground. The last remains of these were covered in about 1826.



Dkew?On Christ Church Cathedral. 217

be traced along the hack of the houses in Skinner's-row, described as, for instance:?

"The precinct wall, serving as a backside to the houses of Mr. "Wmgfield and Mrs. Parsons, in Skinner's-row, and giving light to their

back rooms."

Thus I can trace the limit of the monastic buildings at the south side. I was disappointed to come on no remnant of the eastern pre cinct wall, in what is now St. Michael's-hill, but Mason's map lays down its limit, and it exactly coincides with the line of the west side of Christchurch-lane, as it existed in 1761, about the centre of the present roadway. It is parallel with the ancient wall to the west of the King's Bench Court, before alluded to, so that here we have, with but little conjecture, the limits defined of the Domus Conversorum, sometimes known as the Common House, which we would look for in the usual monastic plan, and we recognise, under a misunderstood and

corrupted name, the "

Commons House" of Christ Church Cathedral, so often mentioned in records, where sundry parliaments were held, the last in 1559 ; not a "House of Commons," but the common house of the guests, postulates, and brethren of the monastery.

Analogy of similar plans would lead us to look for the abbey Gate way in the north-west corner of the group, and then we suddenly recall that we all remember it, unrecognised as such before the late restora tion. There are photographs showing it extant. Little knowing that the cloister level lay nine feet under the surface of the soil, one did not recognise in the cellar-like arch above it the head of the Abbey Gateway. Its site was exactly under the doorway of the present south-western porch. A Gatehouse lodge, or parlour, should have been about here ; my restoration of this feature is purely con

jectural. Assuming the precinct boundary to fix the width of the Common House, I conjecture it as arched in two spans, with a row of

pillars down the centre, as would be most usual in such a building. Por the Befectort, I have only, I admit, such slender evidence as

the precinct boundary well-defined, and the analogy of other monastic plans affords : we know from precedents that it should be traced here.

Taking all the evidence which has been recited, and other minor corroborative hints which the old plans afford, one can sketch the cloister plan so far, but to find that there would not be room for the refectory to stand east and west in the usual way, between the

south cloister walk and Skinner's-row. It could not have projected from the group standing north and south, as it does in other places; because the limit of the precinct forbids. One then recollects the declivity of the ground, and that if it had been planned upon the same level as the cloisters, it would have been many feet below Skinner's-row, and that passers-by would have looked down into its

chimneys. Everything points to the conclusion that the refectory was not on the ground level, but on that of the dormitories, and extended over the south cloister walk. Here, again, the plans give




faint indication of a passage next the kitchen, which would exactly serve in position for a staircase between the kitchen and refectory.

The following are definitely or approximately the internal dimen sions of the several parts of the plan:?

Cloister garth and Cloisters, . . . . 76 ft. by 84 ft. East Side?Dormitory staircase leading to church, 25 ft. 7 ft.

Chapter-house, . . . . 42 ft. ? 20 ft.

Slype,.28 ft. ? 8 ft.

Kitchen,.30 ft. ? 30 ft. South Side?Staircase,.26 ft. ? 7 ft.

Eefectory, . . . . 75 ft. ? 33 ft.

West Side?Common House, . . . 82 ft. ? 29 ft.

Lodge,.29 ft. ? 10 ft.

Gateway,.17 ft. ,, 7 ft.

Beyond the cloister walls, speculation can but vaguely follow the existence of the inferior buildings of the monastery. The broken out line of the precinct suggests the projection of square buildings, and one places the finger on the spot where the Infirmary would most likely be. A shred of evidence is, I believe, locked up in a term I cannot construe. Sedding, in his schedule of tenements, describes

several of them in this wise, e.g.:?"23. Part of Coolfaoius as a

backside to Mr. Sillcock's house in Skinner*s-row." When I trace out the plots described as "Part of Coolfabius," and

obliterate modern boundaries and walls, I find that this is a corner by the east wall of the kitchen, and under the great overhanging wall of the precinct. I believe I recognise in the name the Irish word, ctnt, a corner, and I look with confidence to some better antiquary to interpret what this corner was.3 It is the spot where one would look for the ofiices of baser use; the middens, privies, and great drain from the kitchen.

Under the present green sward, between the railings of Christ church-place and the church, antiquaries may assume the founda tions of these buildings lie, and may yet be investigated. It may be a parallel for the discovery of a fragment of the cloister of old St. Paul's, which has led to the creation of a pretty garden in the heart of London, if we should some day uncover some of our cloisters to be an object of interest in the city garden, which, I hope, may be created in the yard of Christ Church Cathedral.

3 Dr. Joyce, on being consulted, is unable to form an opinion as to the mean

ing of this name.



Documents

On Evidences of the Plan of the Cloister Garth and Monastic Buildings of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, Now Known as Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin