Geophysical survey has recently revealed that a large
aisled guesthall, comprising of seven bays, lay to the north of
the guesthouses. The hall was probably entered via a porch at the
southern end, and would
have been heated.(109) Guests would have
slept and also eaten here. In the early days the abbot of Fountains
would have presided as
host, but later entertained
distinguished visitors in a private chamber. The guesthall was
built c. 1170, during Robert
of Pipewell’s abbacy, and was probably
intended as a public hall for ‘the common folk’ [Gerald of Wales].(110) These
guest halls could, evidently, be rather rough. An ‘untoward
event’ occurred
in the guesthall refectory at Margam Abbey
in 1180, when one young man struck another and was the next day
found dead on the very
spot where he had thrown
his punch.(111) Guests at Furness were
stabbed to death by visiting grooms in the thirteenth century when
a brawl broke out in the
abbey’s
guesthall.(112)
Household expenses
The abbey accounts for 1457/8 record that 13s 4d was spent on linen for
the refectory and hospice.
[Memorials of Fountains III, p. 51.]
The hospice outside the West Gate
Fountains may also have had guest accommodation of sorts outside
the gates of the abbey, perhaps to provide for women who were
not permitted to be received as guests within the precinct.
There certainly seems to have
been a hospice here affiliated to the abbey in the sixteenth
century, for according to the terms of the tenancy, the keepers
of the West Gates, Robert
and Ellen Dawson, were to build stables by their house or the
hospice for their own horses and those of their guests,
the
which guests Robert agrees by these presents to receive and
care for diligently and humanely in everything, both in word
and
deed, and to treat them courteously and kindly in the accounts
of
their expenses as far as he is able, without damage to the
monastery
or of himself. (113)
