ss has survived, so far as I
have been able to discover; but it would be rash to say that none exists.
Meanwhile I will shew you a French example of a press, from the sacristy
of the Cathedral at Bayeux, but I cannot be sure that it was originally
intended to hold books. M. Viollet-Le-Duc, from whom I borrow it, decides
that it was probably made early in the thirteenth century.

_Cupboard from sacristy of Bayeux Cathedral._

The Durham _Rites_ speak only of book-presses standing in the cloister
against the walls; but it was not unusual to have recesses in the wall
itself, fitted with shelves, and probably closed by a door. Two such are
to be seen at Worcester, immediately to the north of the chapter-house
door. Each is about ten feet wide by two feet deep.

_Book-recess, east walk of the cloister, Worcester._

A similar receptacle for books seems to have been contemplated in
Augustinian Houses, for in the Customs of the Augustinian Priory of
Barnwell, written towards the end of the thirteenth century, the following
passage occurs:

The press in which the books are kept ought to be lined inside
with wood, that the damp of the walls may not moisten or stain
the books. This press should be divided vertically as well as
horizontally by sundry partitions, on which the books may be
ranged so as to be separated from one another; for fear they
be packed so close as to injure each other, or delay those who
want them.

Recesses such as these were developed in Cistercian houses into a small
square room without a window, and but little larger than an ordinary
cupboard. In the plans of Clairvaux and Kirkstall this room is placed
between the chapter-house and the transept of the church; and similar
rooms, in similar situations, have been found at Fountains, Beaulieu,
Tintern, Netley, etc. The catalogue, made 1396, of the Cistercian Abbey at
Meaux in Holderness, now totally destroyed, gives us a glimpse of the
internal arrangement of one of these rooms. The books were placed on
shelves against the walls, and even over the door. Again, the catalogue of
the House of White Canons at Titchfield in Hampshire, dated 1400, shews
that the books were kept in a small room, on shelves there called
_columpnae_, set against the walls. It is obvious that no study could have
gone forward in such places as these; they must have been intended for
security only, and to replace the wooden presses used elsewhere.