Size, Structure, and Placement
Refectories varied in size and dimension, based primarily on the wealth and size of the monastery, as well as the period in which the room was built. They shared certain design features. Monks ate at long benches; important officials sat at raised benches at one end of the hall. Outside the refectory usually stood a lavabo, or large basin for hand-washing. Other factors were also largely fixed by tradition. In England, the refectory was generally built on an undercroft (perhaps in an allusion to the upper room in which the Last Supper reportedly took place) on the side of the cloister opposite the church. Benedictine models were generally laid out on an east-west axis, while Cistercian models lay north-south.
Norman refectories could be as large as 160 feet (49 m) long by 35 feet (11 m) wide (as is that in the abbey at Norwich). Even relatively early refectories might have windows, but these became larger and more elaborate in the high medieval period: the refectory at Cluny Abbey was lit through thirty-six large glazed windows. That in the twelfth-century abbey at Mont Saint-Michel had six windows, five feet wide by twenty feet high.
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