Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

The Abbot's Great Guest hall was built during the abbacy of Abbot Thomas Fyndon in c. 1294-1300. This impressive building was situated directly to the north-west of the Great Cloister on the east side of the Great Court and adjoining the north side of the Abbot's Lodging.

Monument Types

• REFECTORY (Medieval to Unknown - 1294 AD?)

Full description

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The Abbot's Great Guest hall was built during the abbacy of Abbot Thomas Fyndon in c. 1294-1300. This impressive building was situated directly to the north-west of the Great Cloister on the east side of the Great Court and adjoining the north side of the Abbot's Lodging.

It was a rectangular shaped building, constructed of flint over two storeys, with stone lancets, measuring internally some 77 feet in length N-S by 38 feet in width E-W, with a series of buttresses on its west side and northern end. An encaustic tiled pavement was found within the undercroft at the south end of the Hall during excavations in 1845. The Hall, has a stately staircase at its north-west angle. The hall was a fine chamber of six bays with battlemented wall and lofty roof. The undercroft had two rows of columns, five in each row, supporting a groined roof.

The 'magna aula', or great hall is where the Abbot entertained his most distinguished guests at such times as he wished to make a greater display than was possible in the refectory or in his private dining room. On the occasions when the Abbot dined in the hall, considerable state and ceremony were used; and he would be accompanied by his two chaplains and attended by the chamberlain, the seneschal, the marshal of the hall, the carver, the waiter, the pantler, the valet, and the cupboard-man, each of whom had his allotted duties of service to render to the Abbot.

The hall was demolished sometime between 1655 when it appeared intact in a print and 1722 where another opicture shows that the hall had completely disappeared. Although some walls of the undercroft still survive and have been incorporated into a 19th century replacement building.

John Newman, 1969, The Buildings of England: North East and East Kent (Monograph). SKE7874.

Tatton-Brown, T., 1985, Three Great Benedictine Houses in Kent: Their Buildings & Topography (Article in serial). SKE8094.

Roebuck, J., 2002, St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (Monograph). SKE30293.

Sources and further reading