Lewes Priory precinct: domestic buildings

Text Box: Within the Priory walls: domestic buildings Within the Priory boundary walls, as well as the Great Church and conventual buildings, were all the ancillary domestic buildings required for the running of a great household. Many of these, as at Castle Acre, were situated on or close to the banks of the stream which ran through the site, in the case of Lewes Priory, a specially diverted branch of the Cockshut, which powered the watermill in winter and flowed through the reredorter. It was still flowing in the late 18th century. Although almost nothing of these ancillary domestic and industrial buildings is visible on site today apart from a single ivy covered section of masonry from the priory kitchens, a great deal of detail about them is contained in the obedientiaries’ accounts for the 1530s and in the early leases of the Priory site following the dissolution. Many of these were associated with food provisioning, whilst others housed building maintenance, a tailor’s workshop and the administrative offices, including the “counting house” and the “Chequer” (exchequer) the latter apparently within the complex of the Prior’s lodgings. Kitchens, bakery, brewhouse and stores etc As in other large monasteries there were two kitchens, one for the monastery and another for the Prior’s household. Between them they had to be able to cook up to 2 complete bullock carcasses as well as 5 or 6 whole sheep on a single meat day, necessitating the type of multi-chimneyed kitchens which survive at Glastonbury. The main Lewes kitchen survived well into the 18C when it was recorded, in about 1760, as being “a large elliptical oven … measuring 17 feet in its longest diameter”. The

Text Box: Prior’s private kitchen and bakehouse, adjoining his lodgings, gardens and orchard, reserved with the church and conventual buildings to the king in a lease of 1540, lay further north. Adjoining them was the Great Malthouse, whilst underneath the Prior’s lodgings near to the west front of the Priory church were two wine cellars. Further south and perhaps, as at Castle Acre, west of the main kitchens and larderer’s stores lay the priory bakery and brewery which would have needed to be sited close to the stream near to the granary. The flour itself was milled on site by a watermill in winter and a horse mill in summer. Within the precinct there was also a pig farm, fish ponds and the priory dovecote, containing 3228 spaces, demolished in the early 19th century and constructed, like the much smaller monastic dovecote at Swanborough Manor of chalk blocks. Its existence is confirmed in the 1540 lease when the northern half of the dovecote was reserved to the king. There was also a fish house adjoining the mill pond, used possibly both for storage and as a smokehouse since herrings were smoked on site at Lewes. Gardens and orchards In addition to the Prior’s gardens and orchard there were

Text Box: several other walled garden enclosures within the site, including the Great Garden of the convent next to the cemetery, the vine garden, the pond garden adjoining the mill pond, the infirmary garden and the hosteller’s garden, the latter producing onions and hemp seeds as well as apples and pears. The proctor’s accounts also mention an oriel garden and the apple orchard, as being leased to the Prior, which may or may not be different to the Prior’s gardens and orchard already mentioned. There was also the upper and lower crofts, probably east of the main site and perhaps comprising the modern day Dripping Pan and Convent Field. Stables, forge and building workshops To the south (off the map) the priory precinct was bounded by the main course of the Cockshut stream and at the eastern end of the site there is a small inlet where, at a wharf and with the aid of a crane, barges offloaded building materials such as chalk from the quarries at the Cliffe and provisions for the priory, including barrels of fish and other items brought upriver from Seaford. Within the precinct there were glasiers’, carpenters’ and stonemasons’ workshops and stores for items such as paving stones and ridge tiles. There was also a blacksmith’s forge which consumed almost 1650lbs of iron a year in manufacturing a variety of hooks, hinges and other items as well as horseshoes both for the priory and its neighbouring manors. There were several stables within the precinct for the prior’s palfreys and visitors as well as for the horses of the senior obedientiaries and household servants, the miller and brewer, both of whom had carts which were also housed on site.

Left: Lewes Priory dovecote Top: Priory site from J Marchant Lewes Map 1824 Right: Castle Acre domestic offices along stream