Abbey

Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns.

The concept of the abbey has developed over many centuries from the early monastic ways of religious men and women where they would live isolated from the lay community about them.

The layout of the church and associated buildings of an abbey often follows a set plan determined by the founding religious order.

Abbeys are often self-sufficient while using any abundance of produce or skill to provide care to the poor and needy, refuge to the persecuted, or education to the young.

The earliest known Christian monasteries were groups of huts built near the residence of a famous ascetic or other holy person.

Disciples wished to be close to their holy man or woman in order to study their doctrine or imitate their way of life.

[2] In 312 AD, Anthony the Great retired to the Thebaid region of Egypt to escape the persecution of the Emperor Maximian.

[3] At Tabennae on the Nile, in Upper Egypt, Saint Pachomius laid the foundations for the coenobitical life by arranging everything in an organized manner.

There were nearby large halls such as the church, refectory, kitchen, infirmary, and guest house for the monk's common needs.

The usual arrangement for monasteries of the Eastern world is exemplified in the plan of the convent of the Great Lavra at Mount Athos.

With reference to the diagram, right, the convent of the Great Lavra is enclosed within a strong and lofty blank stone wall.

There is a small postern gate at L. The enceinte comprises two large open courts, surrounded with buildings connected with cloister galleries of wood or stone.

In the centre of this court stands the katholikon or conventual church, a square building with an apse of the cruciform domical Byzantine type, approached by a domed narthex.

Opening from the western side of the cloister, but actually standing in the outer court, is the refectory (G), a large cruciform (cross shaped) building, about 100 feet (30 m) square, decorated within with frescoes of saints.

At the upper end is a semicircular recess, similar to the triclinium of the Lateran Palace in Rome, in which is placed the seat of the hegumenos or abbot.

[1] Eventually, the buildings of a Benedictine abbey were built in a uniform lay out, modified where necessary, to accommodate local circumstances.

[4] The plan of the Abbey of Saint Gall (719 AD) in what is now Switzerland indicates the general arrangement of a Benedictine monastery of its day.

The school consisted of a large schoolroom divided in the middle by a screen or partition, and surrounded by fourteen little rooms, the "dwellings of the scholars".

Each hospitium had its own brewhouse and bakehouse, and the building for more prestigious travellers had a kitchen and storeroom, with bedrooms for the guests' servants and stables for their horses.

This infirmary complex included a physician's residence, a physic garden, a drug store, and a chamber for the critically ill.

[5] These included Canterbury, Chester, Durham, Ely, Gloucester, Norwich, Peterborough, Rochester, Winchester, and Worcester.

Westminster Abbey was founded in the tenth century by Saint Dunstan who established a community of Benedictine monks.

[6] The only traces of St Dunstan's monastery remaining are round arches and massive supporting columns of the undercroft and the Pyx Chamber.

[4] On the eastern side, there was a dormitory, raised on a vaulted substructure and communicating with the south transept and a chapter house (meeting room).

The Cluniac Reforms brought focus to the traditions of monastic life, encouraging art and the caring of the poor.

[9] As of 2025, however, fragments of the original Abbey still stand and archaeological excavations have intermittently been conducted over the past century, yielding a massively important and rich source of information.

"[10] It long maintained its rigid austerity, though in later years the abbey grew wealthier, and its members indulged in more frequent luxuries.

The cloister is duly placed on the south side of the church, and the chief buildings occupy their usual positions around it.

Wide swamps, deep morasses, tangled thickets, and wild, impassable forests were their prevailing features.

[12] The plan of a Coptic Orthodox monastery, from Lenoir, shows a church of three aisles, with cellular apses, and two ranges of cells on either side of an oblong gallery.