Daily bread
In 1512, the keepers of the West Gates at Fountains, who rented
a house there, received each week from the bakehouse seven loves
of the best bread and seven of the inferior kind; while their
successors only received six loaves of each, they did collect
three extra gallons of ale from the brewhouse each week.
[Lease Book of Fountains Abbey, nos. 276, 237.]
The two-storey building that lay to the
south of the woolhouse, and was part of the same complex, is thought
to have housed the abbey's bakehouse and brewhouse. This is now
heavily ruined, but was once a fine ashlar building dating from
the late thirteenth century.(24)
The Bakehouse
A huge brick-lined oven in the southern end of the lower storey
suggests that this was the abbey bakehouse. Here, bread would have
been baked for the monks, lay-brothers and servants, as well as
corrodians, guests and the poor. Saturday was probably the main
day for baking.(25)
At least two types of bread were baked here - the better bread was
for the convent, the poorer quality bread was for the yeomen.(26)
'The Beaulieu Account Book', compiled. c. 1270, lists four different
types of bread.(27)
Bread of sorts was also fed to horses and dogs. The mid-fifteenth
century account books record payments for 'horsebread', and the
Lease Book mentions 'grey' loaves that were fed to dogs. In 1520,
the forester of Fountains Park received as part of his daily allowances
two loaves of grey bread for his hounds.(28)
The brewhouse
Waste not, want not
In the late thirteenth century the monks of Beaulieu Abbey
used the dregs of the malt to feed the community's pigs and
poultry.
[D. Williams, The Cistercians in the Early Middle Ages,
p. 206.]
The upper storey of the bakehouse has been identified
as the brewhouse, for not only were the two buildings often together,
but there is evidence of a piped water supply. Brewing was one of
the few industrial processes that required an abundant supply of
water.(29)
Brewing occurred weekly and the ale was
probably only intended for internal use. Two kinds of ale were produced.
The
community would have received the better quality ale.(30)
In 1531, John Cooke was the brewer [pandoxtrium].
The terms of his lease reveal that should age or infirmity cause
him to retire, he would be provided for by the community; in other
words, he would receive a pension of sorts.(31)
