From near the south end of the common room extended the abbey’s reredorter (toilet block); this had 2 parallel walls three feet apart extending eastwards.

Returning to the cloister, let us turn our attention to the south range. Adjoining the Common Room would have been another passageway or slype. The rest of the range was taken up by the refectory and its undercroft.

The canons’ refectory was a large room at first floor level, with an undercroft used for storage purposes at ground level. The inside of the north wall of Abbey House’s outbuildings has a witness to the vaulting of the undercroft, while a witness to the undercroft’s south wall can be seen on the east face of the chimney; this fixes the refectory’s width at 25 feet. The room dates from the first half of the 13th century.

In 1985 the owners of Abbey House demolished the shippon, stable and earth closet which had stood on the site of the smaller slype and the east end of the refectory undercroft. A rescue dig was undertaken, and the dimensions of the undercroft verified. It was also apparent that the undercroft vault had been ribbed, the refectory floor tiled, and further buildings had extended southwards, presumably connected with the Base Court (see later).

Returning once more to the cloister, let us turn to the west and try to imagine the two-storey Abbot’s lodging which stood on the other side of the hedge separating Abbey House from Manor House. In fact, this is not such a difficult undertaking, as a sketch showing this building standing in its entirety, complete with roof, and probably lived-in, was made in 1727 by Buck. The building also dated from the 13th century, and had Early English lancet windows and steps. St John Hope thought it probably extended as far as the existing road.


The abbey’s base court consisted of brewhouse, bakehouse and malthouse, all buildings mentioned in 1490. All have disappeared, and probably originally extended across the road and into the fields beyond. When natural gas was supplied to the village in the early 1980s, the contractors dug a trench along the road, ploughing through monastic foundations as they did so: These would be base court building foundations, no doubt.

In the fields near Boyah there was until its demolition in the 1980s a deserted farm building known locally as the Malthouse, two fields away from Littlehay Grange. None of the buildings demolished in the 1980s appeared to precede the 18th century, but it possible that there were earlier bits. Professor Colvin did not think it belonged to St Mary’s Abbey because the abbey had a malthouse in the base court.