The Refectory at Easby Abbey: Form and Iconography

Abstract

This paper argues for a distinction between monastic and canonic architecture in twelfth-and thirteenth-century England in one building type, the refectory. Analysis of the refectory at Easby Abbey in Yorkshire, the earliest and most complete surviving canons' refectory in the north of England, provides for comparison with monastic refectories, particularly those of the Cistercians. It is suggested that canons' refectories were conscious reflections of the Cenaculum in Jerusalem, that the impulse for such representation was characteristic of canons, and that the adoption of the distinctive two-story building form followed from the involvement of England in the Third Crusade.

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Peter Fergusson

Peter Fergusson's major area of research is in the architecture of the reform movements in the north of England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. His Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth Century Englandwas published by Princeton University Press in 1984. [Department of Art, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02181]