Some weeks ago I visited Mount Grace Priory in North Yorkshire. Mt Grace is the best preserved example in England of a Carthusian monastery, where the monks lived as hermits. One of the individual cells has been reconstructed and restored and furnished, to show how the monks would have lived.
The 'cells' are more like modern day starter homes. In the restored cell, pictured here with figure, there are three rooms downstairs and one large one above with a weaving loom. All of the monks had some practical work such as weaving, spinning, book binding and the like. Each monk had a garden, a privy and a short length of cloister. Food was given them through a hole in the front wall by lay Brothers who basically took care of them and the administration of the monastery.
The film Into Great Silence, which I mentioned some weeks ago, was made in the large Carthusian monastery in France. Quite an austere life.
In contrast and a million miles away from the simple hermetic life, which I do not hold up as an ideal by the way, take a glimpse at the details of a prize winning shed in Reading Berkshire...inspired by Roman architecture. National Shed Week indeed?!! Only in Britain!
