The Architecture of Stability Monasterie

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What are the architectural forms that shape and

contain monastic life? Drawing on historical sources, as well as the experience of a year’s ethnographic fieldwork in a Catholic English Benedictine monastery, inthis article I wish to explore the aesthetic and socialqualities of monastic architecture, focussing on the casestudy of a particular place: Downside Abbey, inSomerset, England. I will focus on particular featuresand details of the monastery buildings in order to illus-

trate the significance of stability to the social life of themonk. Benedictine monks vow ‘stability’ to theirmonastery of profession – they promise to committheir lives to a particular place, and in doing so theyincorporate their own life cycle within a particular setof buildings. Having explored the monastery buildingshistorically and ethnographically, I intend to use this

idea of an ‘architecture of stability’ as a way of asking

questions about life beyond the cloister walls. Giventhe apparent prevalence of ‘non-places,’ as described by Augé (1995), how might the Benedictine emphasis onthe importance of place help us to think critically aboutthe proliferation of an architecture that reflects rapidmovement, decreased social interaction, and detach-ment from history and identity?

The place that will be described here is a built envi-

ronment for living a particular kind of life. The Abbey,one of 13 male Catholic Benedictine monasteriescurrently active in England, is home to a community of30 Catholic men professed as monks and organisedaccording to the 6th century Rule of St Benedict. Mostof these monks entered the monastery before 1970;four of the current community entered the monastery

The Architecture of StabilityMonasteries and the Importance of Place in a World ofNon-Places

R.D.G. IrvineUniversity of Cambridge

Etnofoor, Architecture, volume 23, issue 1, 2011, pp. 29-49


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in the past decade. So, while the age range of thecommunity is one in which men at all stages of adult

life are present, from monks in their twenties throughto monks in their nineties, the community does have anaging profile, with the majority over 60 years of age. Almost all of the monks are from England; when themonastery receives enquiries from overseas, it generallysuggests that men who feel they have a vocation trymonasteries closer to their home first of all – however,this is offered as advice, not applied as an absolute rule,and in fact one of the youngest members of the commu-nity is from outside of Europe. All monks in thecommunity have been educated beyond school level,usually at secular universities in addition to seminaries.

In my experience of fieldwork, I experienced thisbuilt environment not as a member of the community,but as a guest. I followed the monks’ timetable, eating,praying, and working alongside the community –nevertheless my role as guest meant that there were

important elements of separation, many of which werespatial, as will be described later in this paper when Ispeak about the accommodation of the guest in themonastery’s architecture. I was an outsider within themonastery, although one occupying a space toward which the community could communicate its values,and within which I could learn through partial partici-pation. I will begin this account of the monastery’s

architecture from this perspective of an outsiderarriving and experiencing the building as a monument.First, I will consider what we learn about the commu-nity and its history from the buildings themselves,attempting to understand the values expressed by thearchitecture. This will provide a basis for exploring thekind of life that is lived within these buildings.

The atmosphere of a medieval church?

The monastery is set back from a busy road, the A367. As the square tower of the Abbey Church comes into view, buttressed and crowned with pinnacles, the trav-eller who chooses to turn off from the flow of trafficcontinues along a narrow passageway, reaching a signpointing to the ‘Visitor Entrance.’ As the travellerenters the most accessible part of the monastery – the Abbey Church, where laypeople are able to join themonks in their daily liturgy – what is immediatelystriking is the building’s ability to evoke a past. As amonk of the community wrote in an architecturalhistory of Downside, ‘It is not a medieval church… And yet to the perceptive stranger visiting it to-day,there is no doubt that it possesses the atmosphere of amedieval church’ ( James 1961: 6). Built in several stagesbetween 1880 and 1925, it is nevertheless a building which asserts its own antiquity. It was, from the first,

intended to be imitative of medieval architecture. Thefirst plan, drawn by Archibald Dunn and EdwardHansom in the 1870s, drew heavily on the gothicarchitecture of French Cathedrals, especially Amiens, which Dunn had studied ( James 1961: 10); the draw-ings prepared by Dunn and Hansom, complete withprocessions of tonsured monks, demonstrate the medi-evalist imagination at work. Yet of this plan, only the

mid-part of the church was completed, in addition tothe ambulatory (that is, the walkway around the envis-aged east end of the church) and the side chapels radi-ating from the ambulatory. After Dunn’s death, thedecision was made to entrust the building work to Thomas Garner, who drew his own new plans for thechurch, which envisaged a square east end, which he


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felt was more in keeping with the architecture ofEnglish medieval churches (1961: 47); his design was

largely based on the Perpendicular Gothic style ofEnglish churches in the fifteenth century (1961: 42). The building work was continued by Giles GilbertScott in 1925, who blended his own work with Garner’sscheme, following its proportions. The west end of thechurch was not completed, as the community could notdecide whether they wished to extend the nave of thechurch further, and so opted to build a ‘temporary’ plain west wall so as to delay the decision (1961: 75-76). This wall still stands.

Starting at the west end of the Abbey Church, where the visitor’s entrance is located, we find ourselvesstanding between columns that reach upward towardspointed arches. The very use of the pointed arch, whichis characteristic of the Gothic style of architecture, is ofcourse a reference to an architectural past, a clear indi-cation that in this building we see the revival of historic

forms. The use of this style of architecture had seriouslydeclined in England following the 16th century EnglishReformation.1 Increasingly, themes from Classicalarchitecture were incorporated English building styles,and it was this style that was adopted by architects suchas Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor intheir construction of churches in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries. Not only did these architects

move away from the Gothic style towards the Classicalin their use of colonnades, triangular pediments, androunded arches, it is also clear that they were dispar-aging of the Gothic style (Lang 1966: 245-246; Worsley 1993: 114).

Interior of Downside Abbey, facing eastwards


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in England had come to an abrupt halt following thedissolution of the monasteries between 1536 and 1540

under the reign of Henry VIII. Yet English vocationsto the Benedictine life continued, and Englishmenentered monasteries on the European continent. Themonastic community of St. Gregory the Great, nowresident at Downside, was founded in Douai in 1606,then a notable centre for Catholic exiles (Bossy 1975:12-17), as a house from which to send monks asmissionaries to England. The community remained onthe continent until policies suppressing monastic ordersin France, as well as the events of the French revolutionand the declaration of war against Britain by the Frenchrevolutionary government, made it unsustainable tocontinue English Benedictine life there. Forced to leaveDouai in 1794, the community based themselvestemporarily in Acton Burnell, Shropshire, beforesettling at their current site in 1814.

So the monastic community which found itself at

Downside was on the one hand an embodiment ofcontinuity with Catholic life in pre-reformationEngland, the return of Benedictine community life. Yeton the other hand, it was a return after a period ofinterregnum; and Benedictine life had not remainedunchanged during this period of interregnum. On thecontrary, it had come to be shaped by the presence ofheterodoxy, and was a missionary endeavour, under-

taking missionary work in a Protestant country. After arriving at Downside, the community built

around the existing house, adding a chapel and furtherbuildings for school and monastery. They thereforeadapted their space to continue the form of life whichthey had lived on the continent: community prayer, thepreparation of monks to work as missionaries in

parishes away from the monastery, and the running ofa small school for the children of Catholics. Yet by the

1870s, bolder plans were being developed, with the aimof resuscitating the monastic glories of the past.Laurence Shepherd, a Benedictine monk who gave

a retreat for the Downside community in 1882, gives voice to these aspirations. His words are saturated inthe rich history of English monasticism, ‘the tenhundred years history of glory in England’ prior to thereformation (Shepherd n.d.: 115). He evokes thetremendous learning, the hospitality, and above all thesolemn celebration of the Divine Office by thosemonks. He looks around him, and finding the commu-nity at Downside ‘engaged in the grand work ofBuilding a House to God’ (Shepherd n.d.: 121), healmost comes to imagine in this building a restorationof the spirit and place of monasticism in England. ‘If Ihave talked too much as tho’ I were dreaming, dreamingthat St. Gregory’s of Downside was getting turned

gradually into Glastonbury, it is pardonable’ (Shepherdn.d.: 147).

The idea of rebuilding Glastonbury is a potent one. The construction of the new Church at Downsidebegan under Aidan Gasquet, then Prior of the commu-nity. He himself wrote about Glastonbury Abbey as asymbol of England’s monastic heritage (Gasquet 1895).Glastonbury connected the history of monasticism to

the thread of British history. It was the resting placenot only of King Edmund I and King Edmund II, butalso, according to legend, the burial site of King Arthur.Famously, Glastonbury was said to have been visited by Joseph of Arimathea, the man who had taken Jesusdown from the cross and entombed him. For Gasquet,these legends did not need to be verifiable in order to


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be significant: they simply stood as a clear indication ofthe link in the popular imagination between monastic

life and England’s history as a Christian country. ‘Here,and here alone on English soil,’ he wrote, ‘we are linkednot only to the beginnings of English Christianity, butto the beginnings of Christianity itself ’ (Gasquet 1895:4). With the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539, and thesubsequent execution of Richard Whiting, its last Abbot, for treason, this link was all but severed.

To dream that ‘Downside was getting turned gradu-ally into Glastonbury’ is therefore to make a claim ofcontinuity with pre-reformation Christianity and pre-dissolution monasticism. The architecture of Downside Abbey can only be understood with these claims inmind. Its claim as heir to the heritage of medievalmonasteries is not only demonstrated in the medievalidiom deliberately adopted by the architects, but alsoclearly indicated in the decoration and furnishings ofthe church. The vaulting of one of the largest side

chapels, dedicated to St. Benedict, is bossed with the Arms of the principal Benedictine monasteries prior totheir dissolution. The choir stalls to which the monksreturn throughout the day for the cycle of liturgicalprayer are reproductions3 of the choir stalls at ChesterCathedral, itself a former Benedictine Abbey, while thealtar around which the community celebrates Mass isbuilt out of Doulting stone from Glastonbury Abbey.

So the daily life of the monastery is surrounded withpoints of connection to the monasticism of a past age.

Hobsbawm (1983), in developing the concept of the‘invention of tradition,’ has recognised the role ofarchitecture in appealing to traditional authority by way of ‘establishing continuity with a suitable historicalpast. A striking example is the deliberate choice of a

Medieval aspirations demonstrated in the drawing

prepared by Dunn and Hansom, architects, to illus-

trate their design for the Abbey Church prior to the

commencement of building work in 1880


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Gothic style for the nineteenth-century rebuilding ofthe British parliament [partly designed by A.W. Pugin]

and the equally deliberate decision after World War IIto rebuild the parliamentary chamber on exactly thesame basic plan as before’ (1983: 1-2). The use of anti-quarian forms in architecture can root an institution inhistory, offering legitimation of authority by directingattention away from the present moment in time andinto the past. In a rather different context, Bloch (1968,1986) has shown how ritual structures are able to givethe impression of transcending the present. The tombsof the Merina in Madagascar have walls of stone andcement, with the top ‘usually capped by a huge stoneslab covered in concrete’ (Bloch 1968: 100), and areoften brightly painted and decorated. Bloch argues thatthey ‘demonstrate in material form the victory overtime and also over movement. Tombs are emphaticallyplaced in a particular highly significant place and theyare there for ever’ (1986: 169). In doing so, they give

material form to an ideology of descent which ‘remainsstill amidst the vicissitudes of time,’ legitimating theauthority of the ancestors over the present life and itsactivities by creating the impression of ‘a group whichis unaffected by day to day events and which continuesto exist as generations come and go’ (1968: 100).

Returning to the architecture of the monastery, wesee in its insistence of continuity with a medieval past

that the community claims a deeper history than itsseventeenth century origins and its nineteenth centurysettlement in England: it asserts itself the persistenceof a monastic way of life that continues to exist asgenerations come and go. Indeed, following the mannerin which we saw Pugin present Gothic architecture, theappeal to the past does not only give a sense of fixity

through time, but is also a rejection of present errors. To embrace the architecture of a previous age as theembodiment of an objective truth is to dismiss contem-porary deviations from that truth. And, it appears, when Pugin rejected the architecture which followedthe English reformation, he was also dismissing devia-tions from the true religion.

We approach the Abbey church, then, with therecognition that it evokes a particular past and attemptsto bring it into the present. It proclaims the survival ofCatholicism and Benedictine monasticism; and withina heterodox society in which Catholic Christianity hadformerly been suppressed, to proclaim survival is itselfa missionary act.

The Abbey’s tower and its call to prayer

One of the most imposing demonstrations of the

Abbey’s claim to a pre-reformation heritage is its tower,completed in 1938 to a design by Giles Gilbert Scott. The design of the tower is deliberately imitative of thepre-reformation church towers of the county. The‘Somerset Tower’ is a recognisable style that consists inits simplest form of a buttressed square tower, topped with a parapet and pinnacles at each corner (Wright1981). Church architecture throughout the county

between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuryshows the development and elaboration of this theme.Scott, in completing the tower of the Abbey, crowned it with pinnacles and placed it firmly within this tradi-tion. The tower is therefore integrated within aSomerset skyline, a visible sign of the continuity ofCatholicism within the landscape. Indeed, one member


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of the community has published a pamphlet taking thereader on ‘A journey around the ornate parish churchtowers of the Somerset Mendip hills’ (Lambert 1997),in which the tower at Downside is presented as acontinuation (and perhaps even a culmination) of thecounty’s indigenous style of architecture.

The imposing square tower carries a single bell,named ‘Great Bede.’4 Great Bede’s call to prayer, acontinuous steady striking sound, rings out five minutesbefore each point of prayer in the monk’s daily liturgicalcycle. It can be heard for miles around, calling thecommunity from their work to the Abbey Church forpublic prayer, and drawing the attention of laypeople inthe surrounding area toward this centre of worship. Itstructures the daily activity of the monks and serves asa witness to the land around, calling people into theorbit of the monastery’s pattern of existence.

The call to prayer is one of the most striking featuresof life in the monastery. The day is shaped around therepeated call to attend the liturgy at set times: thepresent liturgical round moves through Vigils at 6am,Lauds at 7.10am, Community Mass at 8.35am, MiddayPrayer at 12.30pm, Vespers at 5.45pm and Compline at8pm. Given such a timetable of prayer, the ‘spirit ofscheduling,’ as Zerubavel (1980) describes it, is clearlya significant presence within monastic life. He drawsour attention to the significance of monastic punctu-ality as a means of synchronisation. Through a detailedreading of the temporal concerns in the Rule of St.Benedict, Zerubavel notes the strong sense of mechan-ical solidarity which emerges through the coordinationof times for prayer, meals, work, and so on. Here, hebuilds on an association between monastery and time-discipline that has been invoked by Mumford (1934), who suggested that the ‘presence of order’ (1934: 12) inthe monastery stood ‘opposed to the erratic fluctua-

tions and pulsations of the worldly life … So one is notstraining the facts when one suggests that the monas-teries … helped to give human enterprise the regularcollective beat and rhythm of the machine’ (1934:13-14).5

Throughout conversations about monastic ritualduring my fieldwork, the sense conveyed to me wasthat the monastery’s liturgical cycle aimed to move

individuals beyond subjective experience. This comesthrough most clearly in a conversation with themonastic choir master, who explained to me:

You might have your own concerns which you havebeen struggling with in private prayer, but when youare called to prayer in the Office, these concerns are

Exterior of Downside Abbey, showing the crown of the

Somerset Tower designed by Giles Gilbert Scott


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subsumed, in a way they are objectified, you have your subjective concerns in life but the business ofthe Divine Office is not your concerns, not yourbusiness but the business, the prayer of everyone, ofthe whole church as a unity.

Such an approach is reinforced by the way in which thepsalms are understood. Although the psalms as textsare reflective of the mind of a particular individualpraying to God (some psalms might deal with despair,some with joy, and so on) the practice of chanting

psalms is said to be ‘objective’ in that you are notchanting psalms that are reflective of your own personalstate of mind. Rather, the psalms follow a set orderover a two-week cycle in which the whole Book ofPsalms is recited. One monk, who entered the monas-tery in the 1990s and often serves as a cantor, explainedthat when chanting the psalms, he imagines himself tobe joining with those people who are experiencing the

emotional states set out in the psalm, even (or, hesuggests, especially) if he finds himself in a verydifferent state of mind. ‘The psalms are the prayers ofan individual, so of course they are ideal as the prayersof individuals. But we’re not chanting them individu-ally… and we don’t necessarily share the mindset of thepsalmist.’ The monk chants these words with theunderstanding that they are the common prayer of the

church, and in doing so ‘we stand alongside and repre-sent those in that state of mind, we stand alongsidethem in Christ.’

As one of the senior monks explained in a talkduring an April 2006 retreat for young men consid-ering their vocations,

The most powerful thing about the Divine Office isthe idea that you are praying the same prayer as somany other people. And you will come in at thesame time next day, and the next day, and next week you will say the same prayers. Sounds tedious, no? Well, you know what they say, the first 50 years arethe hardest... But no, really, it’s not tedious when you think about it as something shared by everyone,if you imagine that at that moment in time you are joined in prayer with people the whole world over,and that you are doing what monks and other

faithful have done for generations.

What is being conveyed here is an understanding thatthe monastic ritual which takes place in the AbbeyChurch takes the individual beyond his present circum-stances, and connects him up to a far greater reality. This is poetically expressed by Hedley, an EnglishBenedictine monk and Bishop of the nineteenth and

early twentieth century who wrote a book of medita-tions for priests on retreat. ‘Joining my poor andunworthy voice with this grave symphony of worshipand petition, my feeble breath becomes a part of that which is mighty and divine’ (Hedley 1894: 160), even ‘apart and a voice in that grand universal choir in which Jesus presides’ (1894: 167). So the Abbey’s tower, withits bell ringing out, not only announces the monastery ’s

presence and its continuity with the past; it also assertsthe perpetuity of a cycle of prayer which transcends thehere and now. As has been said of the Merina tombsdescribed by Bloch, the tower is a monument to anorder which, to all appearances, ‘remains still amidstthe vicissitudes of time’ (Bloch 1986: 169).


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Below the infirmary and the rooms of the monks(sometimes referred to as cells) is the chapter house, where the monks meet together for chapters (meetingsof all solemnly professed monks of the community)and conferences from the abbot. There is also the calefactory ,9 a kind of common room with chairs and news-papers where the monks spend periods of recreation,and gather together after supper. These rooms, whichform the ground floor of the west wing of the monas-tery, are linked to the east wing of the monastery by acloister (passageway) which runs alongside the abbey

church. The east wing of the monastery contains theguest accommodation and the refectory, and leads tothe library. Within the refectory the monks gathertogether, seated as a community, eating in silence,listening while a reader reads to the whole communityfrom a book chosen by the Abbot. On the walls of therefectory are portraits of past abbots and other histori-cally significant members of the household; ancestors

whose contributions to the ongoing history of thecommunity still loom large, whose writings are stillstudied and referred to, whose personalities are stillsubjects of conversation. The presence of these ances-tors endures, and here in the refectory we see them asongoing participants, long after their death.

The library contains 150,000 volumes, intended toprovide for the needs of not only the current commu-

nity, but also future generations of monks. In this way,the library is also associated with stability in that itexists independently of the lifespan of individualmonks; monks come and go, but the books stay. As thethen librarian explained to me during my fieldwork,‘when you are dealing with a living collection, you haveto think beyond the present day,’ beyond the lifespan of

the current monks, and towards the needs of futuremembers of the community, as well as visitors andresearchers who might use the collection. The librariancontinued to order books for the library from his bed inthe infirmary in the days leading up to his death fromcancer in January 2007 – a fitting demonstration of hiscommitment to the community beyond the lifespan ofits constituent members.

So the monastery makes visible the commitment tostability by connecting the different elements of themonks’ daily life within the same complex: the sleeping

quarters, the place for prayer, for study, for eating, forrelaxation. Although monks regularly go beyond theboundaries of the monastery, especially for purposes of work in parishes elsewhere, the buildings aspire toprovide all of the monks’ material, spiritual, intellec-tual and working needs: all that is required for themonk to remain within his house of profession. Andso, the monk incorporates his own life cycle into a

monastic complex which is designed to be an enduringunit over and beyond the individual life cycle. Thisendurance is made visible in the monastic cemetery. The monks are buried in the grounds of the monas-tery, where row after row of black cast iron crossesform a massed community of the deceased. Even indeath, the monks’ bodies remain within the boundariesof the monastic household. Stability within the

community continues even when the life of the individual monk is at an end.

It is important to clarify that stability does not meancomplete containment within the space. Monks mayspend up to 30 nights in the year away from the monas-tery, with permission, and many monks use this allow-ance to spend time with their natal families. Monks


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also spend time away giving lectures and talks, acting asspiritual directors, and so on. In addition, the work ofmonks as priests serving Catholics in parishes beyond

the boundaries of the monastery can present a partic-ular challenge to stability, as was made clear by onemember of the community:

So you have your parish, then you need a car to getto your parish. And then you need access to a bankaccount to manage your parish’s finances. And then you... you can see what I’m saying? And you’re not

able to be at Midday office or Vespers because you’reaway saying Mass or visiting the sick, or… Of course,none of these things are bad things, they’re all goodthings. Visiting the sick, saying Masses, this is allpart of the responsibility of being a priest, of coursethey’re good things to do. But if you’re not able to beat office, or eat with the rest of the community…

Well, you have to ask the question, is that Benedic-tine life?

What is significant about this quotation is that it doesnot deny the good done by priests serving in society,but highlights the difficulties presented by that service. The need for cars for travel to move around beyond themonastery, the need to be away at times when thecommunity prays or eats together, are problematic forthe ideology of stability, even while they represent whatis understood as a very real and important service to the

modern world.So stability is certainly not without its challenges.

Yet it remains at the heart of the self-identity of manyof the monks. During a conversation with one memberof the community, who had been speaking of his‘vocation to community,’ he expressed the issue (whilehinting at the pressures) in strident terms:

If you don’t have a call to stability, then what onearth are you doing here? There are so many otherorders that can send you back and forth to this placeand that. You can become a missionary. You can joina travelling circus for that matter. But the vocationhere, it’s about living in community and staying put.If you’re not committed to that, then it ’s a real puzzle what brought you here.

The continuing importance of the ideology of stability was made clear to me in the words of a teacher in theschool run by the monastery:

I think what we demonstrate is the value of stayingput. Modern society is so full of people rushing from

Monastic cemetery in the grounds of the Abbey Church.


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one place to the next, one job to the next, even onefamily to the next. But we’re able to stay put, and Ithink there’s something that’s attractive about thatbecause so many people are rootless.

In this way, he highlighted what was termed the‘witness value of stability’ by a 1970s Commission ofmonks and nuns from throughout the Congregation:

Through the vow of stability Benedictines bear witness, in a torn and individualistic world, to

Christian unity which knows how to overcomebarriers. To live in community is to make theapproach to Christ more clearly visible … In anunstable world where life is characterized bymobility and fragmentation, a Benedictine commu-nity can be a centre where life is deeply experiencedand where others come not only to share in silenceand prayer, but also to discuss the social realities of

the present time … Stable monastic life confrontsthe fleeting character of human experience, soevident today, and seeks an understanding of themeaning of life itself (Rees et al. 1978: 142-143).

Such values may appear counter-cultural. Wittel (2001)has suggested that our society has seen the rise of a‘network sociality.’ He illustrates what this sociality

might look like through ethnographic descriptions ofnetworking activities: parties where interactions arefleeting, where the effort is made to talk to as manypeople as you can within a short space of time, and togather these people as contacts who may be potentiallyuseful to you in your future career. In this context, socialrelationships are commodified (2001: 56), and each

relationship, or potential relationship, becomes instru-mental to achieving particular ends. Such networkingevents are characterised by their ‘promiscuity,’ as oneinformant tells him: ‘Everybody’s eyes are wanderingall the time. Nobody wants to miss out’ (2001: 57). Wittel contrasts this approach to social networking with community. ‘Community entails stability, coher-ence, embeddedness and belonging. It involves strongand long-lasting ties, proximity and a common historyor narrative of the collective’ (2001: 51). By contrast,networking is about short-term ties as vehicles for

individual aims. It is connected with the rise of theimportance of short-term projects, and implies a people who are nomadic in their biographies, moving fromone point of connection to another. People are notmembers of a community; they are freelancers. Long-term stability and the endurance of ties of responsibilityand care to other individuals recede into the distance. The impact of such networking on all aspects of life is

well illustrated by Wittel’s description of the phenom-enon of speed-dating (2001: 66), through which we seeshort-term interactions becoming the mode even inour private lives: the adoption of a networking approachto finding a mate.

What forms of architecture form the backdrop tothis social life of fleeting interactions? Augé (1995: 78)describes such a field thus:

A world where people are born in the clinic and diein the hospital, where transit points and temporaryabodes are proliferating under luxurious or inhumanconditions (hotel chains and squats, holiday clubsand refugee camps, shanty towns threatened withdemolition or doomed to festering longevity); where


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a dense network of means of transport which arealso inhabited spaces is developing … a world thussurrendered to solitary individuality, to the fleeting,the temporary and ephemeral, offers the anthro-pologist (and others) a new object.

He describes such spaces as ‘non-places’: ‘If a place canbe defined as relational, historical and concerned withidentity, then a space which cannot be defined as rela-tional, or historical, or concerned with identity will bea non-place’ (1995: 77-78). The architecture of these

‘non-places’ is concerned with movement on the way tosomewhere else ; Augé begins his account with a descrip-tion of a traveller’s passage through an airport terminal,‘these crowded places where thousands of individualitineraries converged for a moment, unaware of oneanother’ (1995: 3). Supermarkets, hotels, and motor- ways, which replicate in predictable forms with little orno reference to local history or geography, are likewise

treated as ‘non-places,’ through which individuals passas isolated individuals with minimal social interaction.

I will return to Augé’s concept of the ‘non-place’later; at this stage, however, I simply wish to indicatethat the architecture of the monastery stands inconscious opposition to the architecture of the non-place. In contrast to a network sociality of individual-ised movement and fleeting interaction in identityless

spaces, the monastery witnesses to stability, and to the value of a commitment to place. It presents itself as aspace with an historic identity, in which individuals arebrought together and incorporated within an enduringcommunity.

The cloister and the management ofconnection and disconnection

This process of ‘bringing together’ is mediated by thecloister, the passageway which serves as the key elementof connection in the architecture of the monastery. Thecloister is a space of movement which facilitatesfrequent interpersonal encounter, as the monks passthrough it regularly to reach the common areas of Abbey Church (where they attend six communalservices a day), refectory (where they join together in

silence to eat three meals a day), chapter house andcalefactory. Clearly, this is an architectural arrangement which stresses life shared in common, not a life ofisolated individuals. Horn (1973) has outlined thehistoric development of the cloister, drawing on thepresence of the cloister in the architectural arrange-ment of the ninth century Plan of St. Gall, which Hornhas suggested is a ‘statement of policy of the leading

bishops and abbots’ prepared for reform synods held in Aachen in 816 and 817. Horn describes the plan as‘paradigmatic’ for monastic architecture. The develop-ment of cloistered monasteries of this type is dependenton the rejection of hermit-like forms of living and theacceptance of a communal model based on shared andcoordinated activity, such as that outlined in the Rule ofSt. Benedict. He traces the development away from

scattered individual dwellings for monks, as in fifthcentury Egypt10 and seventh to eighth century Irelandand towards increasing connection. So the cloister, forHorn, is a clear indication of a move away from amonastic architecture in which individual monks’ cells were separated and in which the primary concern is themaintenance of individual space, and toward a way of


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living which focuses on social interaction and leads tothe creation of public space.

Nevertheless, the ‘public’ nature of monastic spacecannot be without regulation. This is made clear, forexample, in the spatial management of visitors to the Abbey. Guests are built into the structure of the monas-tery. The guesthouse, providing room for around tenguests, occupies a floor above the monastic refectory. Yet although the guest wing is included within thestructure of the community, we can also see that it isheld separate from the monks’ accommodation. The

simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of outsiders isoutlined in the Constitutions of the English Benedic-tine Congregation, which instruct that there should bea central area, including the monks’ sleeping quarters, which no outsiders should enter without the specificpermission of the Abbot. A wider area is then defined,including the refectory, library and guest accommoda-tion, into which outsiders can be admitted, but in

conformance with norms established by the Abbot. Sothere are layers within layers of ‘enclosure,’ and differentlayers of contact between monks and outsiders. So the Abbey Church, guest accommodation and library areeasily accessible from the exterior (the Abbey Churchis the most accessible of the three, as permission isrequired to use the guest accommodation or library, butthe Church itself is open to all); however, additional

layers of access (through locked doors, one of which ismarked with a sign demanding SILENCE) are requiredto enter the cloister and reach the refectory; and to passthrough to the west wing of the monastery requires the visitor to walk the full length of the north side of thecloister, something they would not ordinarily do, excepton rare occasions when they might be invited to the

common area of the calefactory. Beyond this, up thestairs of the west wing, the private rooms of the monksare the most inaccessible part of the complex.

So the outsider in the monastery, such as myself, isan ‘ambivalent presence’ (Seasoltz 1974: 446). Thearrival of a guest is can be understood as an encounter with Christ: ‘At the last judgement, Jesus will reveal toeveryone the mystery of this hospitality. Through andin the visitor, Christ himself is welcomed or sent away,recognized or unrecognized, just as when he came untohis own people’ (Seasoltz 1974: 441). In addition, the

offering of hospitality provides an opportunity tocommunicate the monastery’s values to the societybeyond the cloister – yet the guest carries with him arisk of disruption which could undermine those very values. It is for this reason that we see the simultaneousinclusion and exclusion of the outsider. He is grantedaccess, but this access is limited. He is invited to partic-ipate in the life of the community, yet he is spatially

separated from the monastic community in the Abbeychurch, in the refectory and in his sleeping quarters.

It is not only in managing interactions with gueststhat the monks seek to maintain private space; whilethe monastery is a site of frequent interpersonalencounter, the importance of solitude is also structuredinto the timetable through the commitment to twice-daily private prayer, as well as the summum silentium

(complete silence, sometimes referred to as ‘the greatsilence’) at the end of the day. This silence, whichstretches from Compline , the last daily point of prayer,through to Lauds the next day (during most of which,of course, the monk will be asleep) restricts interactionand gives the monk opportunity to be alone.

One of the members of the community, with whom


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I worked regularly in the carpentry workshop, drew adeliberate parallel between the time of private prayerand bedtime, the other time of the day in which hecould truly be ‘alone with God.’ The link which hemade was based on two analogies. Firstly, he likenedthe summum silentium, ‘total silence’ in the monasteryduring the hours of night time, to the total silence ofcontemplation, which was the prayer of ‘inner quiet.’Secondly, at bedtime one goes to one’s cell to be alone;and this was much like entering into the ‘cell’ ofcontemplative prayer. He pointed out that the monks

put up their hoods during the time of private prayer,and also after Compline , during the summum silentiumas they make their way to bed. At both times, ‘I’mcreating a place of solitude for myself,’ and putting upthe hood (hence covering the ears and closing off partof the peripheral vision, thus being less inclined todistraction from other people and things around you) was a marker of this solitude. In the architecture of the

monastery this need for solitude, and for a time ofturning away from the community, is reflected in therestricted private space of the cell.

The management of the relationship between publicand private space was one of the aspects of monasticarchitecture that particularly impressed the Modernistarchitect Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Early studies ofthe Carthusian monastery of Ema, near Florence, and

of Greek Orthodox monasteries on Mount Athos, lefta lasting impression on the architect as a relatively young man (Brooks 1997), and he returned to themestaken from his observations of monasteries throughouthis life. Reflecting on the inspiration taken from theCarthusian monastery, Serenyi (1967: 278) has written:‘There is indeed an interplay between the cells, symbol-

ising privacy and individuality, and the building as a whole, symbolising collective order.’ This interplay isreflected in Le Corbusier’s own architectural designsfor both religious and non-religious use. In 1953, he was able to apply these principles to a monastery of hisown design, the Dominican Priory of Sainte Marie deLa Tourette near Lyon, France. The integration ofchurch, library, refectory, and work and recreation spaceshows his awareness of the importance of public spaceand the connection of different elements of activity, yethe also places emphasis on monastic solitude, with each

monastic cell acoustically isolated and with its ownbalcony view out onto the countryside; in this way thepublic space of the landscape becomes appropriated forindividual contemplation.

The lessons learned from monastic architecture were also put to secular use; his ‘Immeubles Villas,’plans for a new urban architecture, show housing builtaround a central courtyard, and connected with

communal facilities such as dining halls, stores andcommon rooms (Serenyi 1967: 283). Yet such commu-nality, for Le Courbusier, could not be at the expense ofthe human requirement for solitude, as expressed in themonastic cell.

The cell as an ideal solution to individual needs canbe found not only in Le Corbusier’s own monastery

at La Tourette, but also in the children’s bedroomsof the Unité d’Habitation at Marseilles, and in theHotel for adults and guests at Unité. The possibilityof total privacy and withdrawal always appears asthe first priority … In fact, the inner life of the individual is at the heart of Le Corbusier’s architecture.In each of his public buildings that called for inter-


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action of individual with community, or interactionamong members of the same family, Le Corbusiertried to allow for the right of segregation (Zaknic1990: 31).

The monastery therefore provides a blueprint for socialconnection, for integration of social activities, but alsomaintains the space for individual retreat or solitude;and it is in this balance that Le Corbusier took inspira-tion for his architecture for modern living. It is worthnoting, however, that his prototypes of monasticism

stress the private over the public to a far greater extentthan the Benedictine monastery which is my subject ofstudy. The Carthusian cell, from which Le Corbusierdrew inspiration, facilitates a life of far greater isolationthan the Benedictine cell: Carthusian monks jointogether in prayer for only some of the liturgy, they donot generally dine together, usually eating meals passedinto their cell through a hatch, and their only commu-

nity recreation is a weekly walk. The cell is thereforethe place where the Carthusian monk spends most ofhis time, alone. So in Le Corbusier’s thinking, it isinteresting to note the particular stress placed uponsolitude, separation and silence. As we saw above, it isprivacy and withdrawal which is the first priority; thisbalance shifts somewhat in the context of Benedictinemonastic architecture, in which individual contempla-

tive space only makes sense where private life isconnected to the life of the community – it is throughsocial interaction, joining together with others, that theindividual grows in holiness.

Thinking about monasteries in a world ofnon-places

In this paper I have sought to describe the ways in which the buildings at Downside Abbey demonstratean architecture of stability . The monastery indicateshistorical stability, appealing to the past in order tostress continuity with pre-reformation and pre-disso-lution Catholic monasticism. Its style suggests a persis-tence of monasticism through time, presenting a socialorder which transcends present circumstances. This is

made particularly evident in the Abbey tower, whichannounces the perpetual cycle of monastic prayer,connected with the prayer of the church throughouthistory, in a style which expresses continuity with otherchurch towers in the county.

The individual life cycle of the monk is incorporated within this stable social order, and this is reflected in anarchitecture which connects all aspects of daily activity.

The monastery is a place for the individual monk tolive, work, eat, grow through prayer and social interac-tion, and die. This stability, this sense of commitmentto place, is part of a monastic self-identity built on acontrast to rapid movement, fleeting interaction anddetachment. Just as Pugin’s contrasts between themoral truth of Catholic architecture and what were, forhim, ‘debased’ architectural forms enabled him to illus-

trate the failings of the post-reformation world (Pugin1841a, 1841b), here once again we see the architectureof stability contrasting itself with a world of ‘non-places’(Augé 1995) in order to assert the moral value of aparticular Christian way of living.

But is the monastery simply at cross-purposes to theform of society which gives rise to Augé’s ‘non-places’?


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Augé describes the experience of the ‘non-place’through passages of ethnographic fiction in which acharacter named Pierre Dupont makes his way along

the highway, to the airport, where he checks in, waitsand then boards an aeroplane. What is striking aboutthese passages is the sense of pleasure the charactergains from his interaction with the ‘non-place.’ Whatever the dangers of fragmentation and rootless-ness alluded to in the Benedictine witness to stability,for Pierre Dupont, it is a space of liberation:

He was enjoying the feeling of freedom imparted byhaving got rid of his luggage and at the same time,more intimately, by the certainty that, now that he was ‘sorted out’, his identity registered, his boardingpass in his pocket, he had nothing to do but wait forthe sequence of events (Augé 1995: 2-3).

On the plane, he flicks through his in-flight magazine,

and reads an advert expressing in clear language thedesire answered by the ‘non-place’: ‘The irresistible wish for a space of our own’ (1995: 4). Outside of socialinteraction, moving in a space where geographicalspecificities are distant, he is able to relax:

He adjusted his earphones, selected Channel 5 andallowed himself to be invaded by the adagio of

Joseph Haydn’s Concerto No. 1 in E major. For afew hours (the time it would take to fly over theMediterranean, the Arabian Sea and the Bay ofBengal), he would be alone at last (1995: 6).

The non-place may be alienating; but here, the travellerfinds peace within this alienation.

Given this retreat into the self, Augé suggests thatthere may already be a need for ‘an ethnology of solitude’(1995: 120). While this project takes Augé toward

non-places like airports, I would suggest that this itfinds its prologue in Le Corbusier’s turn towards thearchitecture of the monastery. Le Corbusier saw inmonastic life a social order capable of allowing forsolitude, and he sought ways to translate this into thearchitecture of the twentieth century. Yet monasticsolitude does not come at the expense of social connec-tion; private life is integrated within a setting that

generates ongoing communal activity, as exemplified inthe architecture of monasteries such as Downside Abbey. The architecture of stability stands not only as amonument to community and commitment to placeagainst a backdrop of continual movement anddispersed social relationships; it also helps us to thinktoward a harmonisation of social interaction and individual solitude, made possible by the managed relation-

ship between public and private space.

E-mail: [email protected]

Notes

1 While it is worth noting the use of Gothic styles of architec-

ture did not cease entirely (Lang 1966: 245), particularly in thecases of work to add to existing Gothic buildings, what is

important here is that its fashionability and use seriously decli-

ned in England in the period between the reformation and the

nineteenth century.

2 A.W. Pugin had, in fact, been commissioned to draw plans for

monastic buildings at Downside, and made several drawings


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for this work between 1839 and 1842 (O’Donnell 1981).

However, a lack of funds meant that it was only later in the

century that building work could begin on a new church and

monastery complex, by which time new plans had been drawn

up by Dunn and Hansom.

3 In 1930, scale drawings and photographs of the Chester stalls

were sent to Ortisei in Northern Italy, where they were repro-

duced in the workshop of Ferdinand Stuflesser ( James 1961:

87-88). The stalls were completed in 1933.

4 The bell is named as a memorial to Bede Vaughan (1834-

1883), a monk of the community who was appointed Archbis-

hop of Sydney.5 Mumford and Zerubavel are perhaps guilty of overstating the

role of abstract time-reckoning in the Rule of St. Benedict.

Dohrn-van Rossum (1996: 33), for example, argues that

Mumford’s mechanistic image is ‘erroneous,’ pointing out that

‘the required punctuality was not related to abstract points in

time, but to points in the sequence of the rhythm of collective

conduct’ – in other words, that monastic time-keeping in the

Rule and the centuries afterward was not rigid and depersona-lised. While this point is important for an understanding of

Benedictine history, I believe that Mumford and Zerubavel’s

approach to punctuality remains helpful for our understanding

of contemporary monastic experience; whatever the time-

keeping basis of monks at the time of the Rule , Downside’s

reading of the Rule is shaped by a more recent imagination. If

the monastic horarium of the sixth century is understood and

restored through the lens of the late nineteenth and early twen-tieth century, then it should be no surprise that monastic tim-

etabling is infused with a mechanised time-discipline.

6 This term resists translation; it is often described as a vow of

‘conversion’ (see Rees et al. 1978: 148-149 for a English Bene-

dictine perspective based on this understanding), committing

the monk to the work of reforming himself, renouncing sin and

accepting new values of monastic life. However, Christopher

Jamison, the former Abbot of another English Benedictine

monastery, offers a broader definition of conversatio morum

which is more in keeping with the varied ways the monks

explained the vow to me: ‘If you look up the word conversation

in some dictionaries, you find a clue to the meaning of conver-

satio. There you discover that the first now obsolete meaning of

conversation is living with somebody … So this Benedictine

vow is a resolution to live with others, specifically with other

monks, and hence to live the monastic way of life’ (Jamison

2006: 116).

7 A Papal Bull is an official decree issued by the Pope.8 With regard to Gasquet’s authorship of these words, it is worth

noting that Knowles (1963: 252) writes that ‘It seems certain

that [Gasquet’s introduction to] Monks of the West … was

almost entirely the work of two ‘ghosts’, Edmund Bishop and

Dom Elphege Cody’; in addition to this, we see very similar

words in pamphlets authored by others. It could be argued that

this demonstrates the extent to which such views were held

and agreed as the collective opinion of a group of monks in thecommunity at this time.

9 From the Latin calefacere , to warm; the name is retained from

that traditionally given in Benedictine monasteries to the room

with the fire where the monks would have gone to warm them-

selves.

10 Aravecchia (2001) in a spatial analysis of hermitages of the

fifth to the seventh centuries in the Kellia, a monastic site in

Lower Egypt, has noted that later hermitages show greaterease of access from the outside, while the development of halls

for shared eating and prayer in later constructions, as well as

the absence of kitchens specifically accessed from particular

apartments, implies an increasing emphasis on communal life,

with monks having a higher level of access to one another.


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Documents

The Architecture of Stability Monasterie