Page 10

Wednesday, 02 March 2005

The Almonry Museum (Page 10)

The Building ...

The building linking the kitchen and north wing was removed and was replaced in two stages. At first a single-storied building was erected at the west end of the site making use of the remains of the kitchen and of the western end of the south wall of the demolished linking building. The new building, which survives, extended east from the kitchen to form a house measuring some 40 ft. (12 m.) from west to east detached by some 20 ft. from the north wing of the medieval building. That house was later enlarged by the addition on its north side of a two-storied timber-framed wing with a stone chimney on the east. The gable of that wing has carved barge-boards and the jettied upper storey is supported on carved brackets. Until the present century the timbering of the upper storey was concealed under diaper pargetting probably of 17th-century date. The detached house was subsequently joined to the medieval north wing by a two-storied building which survives. The lower storey was of stone, making use of the remains of the eastern end of the south wall of the original linking building.  Internally the northern side of the ground floor was designed as a store, the present floor being well below ground level. The upper storey was timber-framed. The higher courses of the original south wall were removed before the new upper storey was added; that is evident from the fact that the lintel of the blocked doorway has been removed to make room for the sill-beam of the upper storey. With the completion of the second stage of the new link between the kitchen and north wing it became possible to insert the present timber-framed internal partition to create an internal passage running east from the kitchen.

The other important post-medieval addition to the present building was the two-storied timber-framed extension of the south wing. In 1835 the lower storey was used as a stable. The upper storey was a loft.  A single-storied western extension, timber-framed on a low stone base and weather-boarded, adjoined the stable in 1835 and was at that date also a stable. It has been removed since 1909 leaving only the base walls.

Before 1794 two pieces of 15^th-century stone carving, perhaps salvaged from the ruins of the abbey or from demolished parts of the present building, were inserted in the internal walls on the ground floor. In the long passage is an elaborate canopy set into what was the outside of the west wall of the medieval north wing. To the right of Prior Lichfield's chimney-piece, in what was the inside of the west wall of the ground floor of the 14^th-century hall, has been inserted in reverse the head of a four-light window with miniature vaulting on its underside.