Reading Abbey

The Monks at Work: the Quiet Cloister

Daily life for the monks centred on their Cloister. Here was a peaceful garden measuring 30 metres square with a well at the south. It was surrounded on four sides by covered walkways 3.8 metres wide where the monks moved about their daily business over the glazed floor tiles with their cream patterns on a reddish-brown background. The round arcaded windows looking onto the garden were made of elaborately carved and painted stonework in the 12th century Romanesque style. We can trace a wide variety of sources as inspiration for the sculptors of these stones -a Norse saga telling the story of a fight between men and dragons, patterns from illustrations in manuscripts, the theology of the Trinity and of the Coronation of the Virgin Mary, designs from fabrics imported from Islamic countries, possibly even the decorations from Roman times still to be seen in mosaics of the ruined town of Silchester 8 miles to the south of Reading.

The east walkway was the main thoroughfare for the monks from Dormitory to Church and into the Chapter House. The west walkway led to the storehouses and the Abbot's House and was one of the few places in the monastery where talking among the monks could be heard, the Novices, or monks in training, being instructed by their Novice Master.

A young man aspiring to be a monk was received into the Abbey in his late teens and had at least a year of experience of the daily life before he could be considered for taking his vows. These committed him to lifelong membership of the community with no possessions of his own, all being supplied to him from his spiritual father the Abbot, never to be married and always under the authority of the Abbot and the will of his brother monks, a life of poverty, chastity and obedience.

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