The common-room, sometimes called the calefactory or warming-place, was a room to which the religious resorted, especially in winter, for the purpose of warming themselves at the common fire, which was lighted on the feast of All Saints, November 1st, and kept burning daily until Easter. On certain occasions, such as Christmas night, when the Offices in the church were specially long, the caretaker was warned to be particularly careful to have a bright fire burning for the community to go to when they came out of the choir. The common-room was also used at times for the purpose of recreation.
"On the right hand, as you go out of the cloisters into the infirmary," says the _Rites of Durham_, "was the Common House and a master thereof. This house was intended to this end, to have a fire kept in it all the winter, for the monks to come and warm them at, being allowed no fire but that only, except the masters and officers of the house, who had their several fires. There was belonging to the Common House a garden and a bowling alley, on the back-side of the said house, towards the water, for the novices sometimes to recreate themselves, when they had leave of their master; he standing by to see their good order.
"Also, within this house did the master thereof keep his _O Sapientia_ once a year--namely, between Martinmas and Christmas--a solemn banquet that the prior and convent did use at that time of the year only, when their banquet was of figs and raisins, ale and cakes; and thereof no superfluity or excess, but a scholastical and moderate congratulation amongst themselves."
"A monastery without a library is like a castle without an armoury" was an old monastic saying. At first, and in most places in England probably to the end, there was no special hall, room, or place which was set aside for the reception of the books belonging to the monastery. In the church and in the cloister there were generally cupboards to hold the manuscripts in constant use. It was not till the later middle ages that the practice of gathering together the books of an establishment into one place or room became at all common. At Durham, about 1446, Prior Wessington made a _library_, "well replenished with old written doctors and other Histories and Ecclesiastical writers," to which henceforth the monks could always repair to study in, "besides their carrels" in the cloister. So, too, at St. Alban's, Michael de Mentmore, who was abbot from 1335 to 1349, besides enriching the presses in the cloister with books, made a collection of special volumes in what he called his study. This collection grew; but it was not till 1452 that Abbot Whethamstede finally completed the _library_, which had long been projected. About the same time, at Canterbury, Prior Thomas Goldstone finished a library there, which was enriched by the celebrated Prior William Sellyng with many precious classical manuscripts brought back from Italy. In the same way many other religious houses in the fifteenth century erected, or set apart, special places for their collections of books, whilst still retaining the great cloister presses for those volumes which were in daily and constant use.