Reading Abbey

Servants of the Abbey: a Life of Constant Toil

Early monasteries and some monastic orders of the time of Reading Abbey had the everyday chores of the community carried out by lay brothers, monks who served God with their physical labour rather than literary work in the Cloister and services in the Church. However, under the Benedictine order followed at Reading Abbey, these everyday duties were carried out by paid servants. There were at least as many employees as there were monks. They came daily into the monastery from the town, passing through the gates in the perimeter wall and reported for work to the various Obedientiaries, the monks with special responsibilities for the daily running of the Abbey.

Some were directly involved in looking after the monks. Cooks came to prepare the meals in the kitchen at the west end of the Dining Room and in the Infirmary. The monks' laundry had to be done. Possibly the Abbey had the services of a full-time lawyer and accountant. Then there was much maintenance of the buildings to be carried out, needing craftsmen skilled in carpentry, stone-mason's work, tiling of the roofs, the working of lead for the gutters and drains. The workshops of these maintenance men were more flimsy structures than the stone buildings of the monks' quarters and all trace has gone of where they stood except in the name of the perimeter wall still standing at the north called the Plummery Wall after the lead working and plumbing sheds nearby. Gardeners came to tend the extensive gardens inside the walls, to the west between the Stables and the Abbot's House and to the east around the Infirmary and graveyard under the modern prison. These gardens not only produced fruit and vegetables but also medicinal herbs, widely used in medieval times for curing sickness.

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