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Monument Types

• KITCHEN (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD (between))
• KITCHEN (POST MEDIEVAL - 1540 AD to 1900 AD (between))

Full description

The remains of the monastic kitchen were found and described in the 18th century. They were south of the west end of the refectory (WCM 96377), on the site of the prebendal house of stall 7, and the lower part of the octagonal building was said by Willis to have survived until the house was demolished in 1845 {1}.

According to Valentine Green: 'At the back of the seventh prebendal house, which anciently belonged to the coquinarius, or kitchener of the monastery, on a line with the west end of the refectory, the remains of a spacious octagonal apartment has lately been explored with attention, and ultimately with success, as far as regards the ascertaining of the use to which so singular and so secluded a structure had originally been designed. Its diameter is 34 feet, and its height from the present bottom of it (which appears to be much raised above its original flooring by its own ruins, or by those of adjacent buildings) to the heads of the windows, 11 feet. Its open and blank windows, of which there were seven, of a well proportioned and uniform Gothic shape and size, occupy in series the planes or sides of the building, the wall of which is in the highest parts 12 feet, and in others not more than 4 feet above their points. From the following remarks I conceive we may with certainty conclude this to have been the ancient conventual kitchen'. Green went on to discuss parallels with more securely identified examples, noting that the Worcester building had lost its roof 'for it is now entirely open at top'. He saw no sign of fireplaces around its perimeter and concluded that it had been equipped with a central hearth. He also noted 'Its former connection with the refectory may still be traced, by several divisions of covered passages directing their course towards its west end, where, under a large arch, long since closed up, their common intercourse was carried on' {2}.

Professor Greatrex has disputed the site of the monastic kitchen, citing two medieval references, one to a camera (chamber) between the dormitory (WCM 96379) and the kitchen and another to the kitchener's door near the plumbum dormitorii. These, she argued, place the kitchen directly to the west of the refectory {3}. An explanation may be that the references are to buildings of the kitchener's establishment rather than the actual kitchen itself, which was as described by Green.

Cross reference to: 96376, cloisters
Cross reference to: 96366, 13-14 College Green

Sources and further reading

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