THE claustral buildings follow a more or less definite plan and the variations are comparatively unimportant. Outside the cloister there is much more uncertainty, and buildings were placed where convenience dictated.

The guest house has already been dealt with, as it is often part of the western range. The lodging of the head of the monastery, abbot or prior, is also placed sometimes in this position, as at Chester and Westminster. In the Cistercian Order the abbot's house generally adjoins the dorter and is therefore attached to the eastern range. The Carta Caritatis orders the abbot to sleep in the dorter, but as early as the twelfth century, as at Kirkstall, the regulation was evaded by joining his sleeping apartment, or even a connecting gallery, to the wall of the dorter. The Cistercian abbot was to live the common life as far as possible, but gradually he became as important and as separate as his Benedictine brother, and his position is reflected in the growing complexity of his house. In this, as in some other respects, the Premonstratensian or white canon corresponded to the Cistercian or white monk, and we notice the same change as time goes on. At Easby, for example, the abbot was provided with a hall, a solar, a bedroom, an oratory, and there are fireplaces. In the Cistercian Order, an extra room or set of rooms seems to have been provided, as at Fountains and Furness, for the visiting abbot, whether of the parent house of Citeaux, or of one of the four daughter houses of La Ferté, Pontigny, Morimond, Clairvaux.