Precincts and Function Of The Monasteries

Precincts can be divided into several different types. One, which was mostly found on monastic sites, contained both an inner and outer court. The outer court was normally based on agricultural and industrial activities whilst the inner court was associated with the infirmary, gardens, almonry and fishponds. Walls often enclosed the precinct, and some monastic sites were also enclosed by ditches and moat their size depending on the wealth of the monastery and how much land was available for buildings to be constructed. Further discussion about moats appears later in this assignment together with a further explanation about Granges.

 The monastic precinct at Fountains was remarkably extensive, covering some seventy acres with a wall that enclosed the Abbey. Another example of a Cistercian site is Kirkstall covered some forty acres and was bounded on the north, west and east by a stone wall, parts of which remain to the SE of the Abbey; the River Aire formed a natural boundary on the south side.  Tintern Abbey precinct measured twenty-seven acres. A good example of a precinct layout of abandoned dams and leats can be found at Standley Abbey which includes twenty-eight acres of agricultural enclosures, numerous fishponds, a mill leat, banks, ditches and a gatehouse.

The function of a precinct was to protect the main monastic buildings and were also economic organizations involved in a variety of actives designed to support people as monasteries could not operate successfully without an income and this usually meant land and products from it the Grange was the means by which monasteries supported their activities. The main archaeological evidence is based on documents, estate maps and aerial photographs that have helped us to understand the humps and bumps found on the ground surface caused by former building foundations. As I have mentioned about fishponds and moats that also can be found also on manors and granges.  Its only right to look at these features and examples we can find and also how the monks used the source of the water supply to help them decide upon their chosen site.

Pipewell Abbey precinct has evidence of both water management together with a massive mill pond which contained a dam standing four metres high whilst Kirkstead fishponds are complex consisting of several parallel ponds of different sizes linked by a single channel. The construction of the larger and more elaborate ponds clearly required much labour and considerable water-engineering skills.

A stream at Dunkeswell Abbey fed two fishponds, the outflow then divided the watercourse in two one flowing along the northern boundary of the precinct, the other passing beneath the west front of the church before turning east to serve the southern clausteral buildings as a drain before entering the river. Byland Abbey precinct had three ponds that when drained were used to power the two mills and like Cleeve Abbey had two leats drawn from the river Washford which were used to feed fishponds and also to drive mills. Bordesley boasted an eighty-nine acres precinct and made maximum use of the water supply to power its watermill for industrial activities.

Some orders had a layout of fishponds such as the Benedictine fishponds in southern England which, generally, seemed to have been fairly simple affairs, either because Benedictine monasteries were uninterested in large scale fish farming or because so many of the monks had good access to river fisheries. However, I feel that we can not say that the more fishponds an Abbey had can reliably inform us of the monasteries wealth or status in the landscape. In fact the number and extent of ponds bears little relation to the wealth or status of the monastery. The scars left on the landscape today by fishponds following the decay of their sluices and the silting of leats which fed them usually leaving a rectangular shape with a flat base and earth banks around three or four feet high with adjacent chain of small stew ponds, when young fish were raised and probably best seen from aerial photographs.

Quite often certain monastery precincts were surrounded in part or whole by moats, some, which served as fishponds as at Robertsbridge, Kirkstead and Pinley Abbey and at Alberbury a Grandmontine order has earthworks of a bank and moat along with building of a large barn and gatehouse, whilst Waltham Abbey in Essex had a number of its building within the precinct that were protected by a moat. Additionally, it has also been shown that it was not only the Cistercians monasteries, which had enclosed precincts with moats, but also the Premonstratensian order of Halesowen also carried out the same process.

In my opinion moats may have been a cheaper way of combining both fish stocks and boundary to protect the monastic site. Many precincts had lavish water supplies provided by Valley Rivers, which ran, passed the precinct of the monastic houses. These natural watercourses fed many ponds and moated precincts along with ‘flushed by diverted watercourses controlled by sluice- gates

River waters were poisonous caused by the sewage that came from the monasteries and this is why so many set about brewing their own beer as it was a lot safer to drink than river water. As we have seen that monastic precincts have provided archaeologists with above ground evidence but some monastic sites are much harder to define. An example of this problem is Rufford Abbey which was landscaped and developed into a country park, thus removing any traces of the precinct and its buildings and preventing us from building up a picture as to what the precinct may have been like

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