The Abbey at Battle

This is the same end of the abbey you saw yesterday, just from a different direction. It is carefully buttressed and is, from this outward side, filled with openings to various larders and storages rooms.

Around the corner is the critical part of the abbey. It is simply not possible to operate a facility filled with people without it. It is the reredorter...the latrine. It is difficult to tell from this view of the remains, but the "seats of ease" are on the (missing) second floor. Outside and on the back side of the abbey where we are standing now are the openings (meaning it would be cold to sit down upstairs) to the access for the cleaners. Periodically, it would be your turn as a monk in the abbey to come down and clean out the excrement. Modern plumbing is a great thing.

Here's a bit better view where you can see more of the outside wall of the reredorter. In the wall facing you in the image below the upper two doors lead to the dormitory, at about the level of the semicircular remanent of the barrel vault that extended out toward you, the door on the left led to the latrine, and the larger door to its right leads to the first floor. The gap between the free standing wall with arches on the left and the mainlevel of the abbey forms the ditch from which served as the drain of the latrine. There, that's more about a medieval toilet than you wanted to know, right?

Here, you can see the side of the abbey with the girl's school in the background.

Looking south across the chapter house we see the dormitory. It ocupie the entire upper floor of the place.

Next door to this is the finely manicured lawn typical of a well-moneyed place in the UK like this private girl's school. Interestingly, we never saw anyone enter or leave this building. I suppose it is summer break, after all.