Recycling The Monastic Fabric: Beyond The Act of Dissolution

Abstract

Archaeological knowledge of both original monastery and post-Dissolution history reinforce the sense people have of tremendous ingenuity and individuality at each monastic site. The rapidity of the process means that on the one hand these buildings obligingly reflect for people in a very exact sense the current expectations of what the plan and domestic expectations of a conventional great courtyard house were believed to be at this period, and on the other the exigencies, the difference of the earlier monastic layout from the conventional house can be seen often to have worked their own subtle spell on these brutal transformations. A 17th-century plan of Chicksands priory, in Bedfordshire, shows, like Newstead, the retention of the cloister walks and the stairs at the south-west corner which would once have given access to the frater in the south range.

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