Along the south wall of the cloister at Chester is a series of recesses which are believed to have been used for bookcases. Two recesses for aumbries are still to be seen in the cloister at Worcester: it is recorded that one book, the _Speculum Spiritualium_, was to be delivered “to ye cloyster awmery.” At Beaulieu the arched recesses in the south wall of the church may have been put to a similar use. These recesses are shown on the plan here reproduced; so also is the common aumbry in the wall of the south transept.
[Illustration: PLAN SHOWING DISPOSITION OF BOOKS IN CISTERCIAN HOUSES]
In large continental houses a bookroom was sometimes needed very early. One of the monasteries of Cassiodorus included a special room for the library, with at least nine presses in it.[232] At St. Gall, a special bookroom was planned, if not actually built, as early as the ninth century. According to the old drawing still preserved at St. Gall, this room was to be on the north side of the presbytery, symmetrically with the sacristy on the south side. It was in two stories. The ground floor was to be arranged as a writing-room,--_infra sedes scribentium_,--the furniture being a large table in the centre, and seven writing-desks against the walls. The upper story was the library.[233] In England we hear of bookrooms oftenest in the fifteenth century, They were a usual feature in later Cistercian houses. The plan just given shows the position of this room between the church and the chapter-house, and not far from the common claustral aumbry. At Whalley Abbey, also a Cistercian house, there was evidently a separate library room, because an inventory of the house’s goods taken in 1537 refers to the “litle Revestry next unto the lebrary.”[234] Kirkstall and Furness also had bookrooms. On each side of the massive arch of the Chapter House at Furness Abbey is a similar arch leading to a small square room, most likely used for books. The illustrations facing this show the position of these rooms on either side of the Chapter House doorway. An extant catalogue of another Cistercian house, that of Meaux in Yorkshire, clearly indicates the whereabouts of the conventual books. Some church books were before the great altar, others were in the choir, a few in the infirmary chapel, and in the common press and other presses of the church. The bulk of them was in the common aumbry, not apparently in the open cloister, but in a room off the cloister. Over the door, on a shelf or in a cupboard, were four Psalters; thirty-six books were on