Abstract
AbstractThe Fish House was built for Glastonbury Abbey in the 14th century beside the vast lake (since drained) at Meare. The fabric shows that it was not intended, as is usually claimed, for processing or storing fish and associated equipment, but as a house. As such it is of interest in its inclusion of a chamber above a hall of standard English medieval plan, anticipating – although it seems not ancestral to – an arrangement otherwise known only from the mid-15th century. Its function, however, was associated with the lake, a resource of great prestige and importance shared by abbot and convent: it was probably intended for at least intermittent use by an official responsible for managing and guarding the fishery, a role formalized in the mid-13th century, but conceivably (and perhaps also) for recreational use by the abbey's cellarer. In either case, its unique design is best explained by its unusual function, important respectively to the study of domestic architecture and monastic administration in ...
Published Version
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