The Abbey of Villelangue - The Cloisters
Another post from Villelangue now, and this time we're taking a brief tour of the cloisters.
The cloister arcade survives intact on two sides now, which is pretty good going really. Here's a view looking south from the site of where the nave of the abbey church would have been, and it gives a good impression of what the original layout would have been - amongst these buildings is the intact monks' refectory, now used as a nursery/greenhouse!
The picture below shows the east side of the cloister arcade, and gives you an idea of how beautifully worked and how beautifully preserved the shafts and capitals are. Look closely, and you can see the springing for the north side of the cloister arcade, which has sadly been lost:-
The fate of the missing pieces is clear. The low wall shown here runs along the line of the outer edge of the arcade, and the owners/occupiers have clearly taken it upon themselves to rescue the random bits of shaft and nook-shaft which they find, presumably while gardening!
God knows what else they'd uncover if they delved too deep - there's a table tomb visible in the top photograph, so it looks like a few folks have decided to use the cloister garth as a final resting place in the past few hundred years....
And that's that. I have wrestled with the revamped Photobucket, and lived to tell the tale!
The cloister arcade survives intact on two sides now, which is pretty good going really. Here's a view looking south from the site of where the nave of the abbey church would have been, and it gives a good impression of what the original layout would have been - amongst these buildings is the intact monks' refectory, now used as a nursery/greenhouse!
The picture below shows the east side of the cloister arcade, and gives you an idea of how beautifully worked and how beautifully preserved the shafts and capitals are. Look closely, and you can see the springing for the north side of the cloister arcade, which has sadly been lost:-
The fate of the missing pieces is clear. The low wall shown here runs along the line of the outer edge of the arcade, and the owners/occupiers have clearly taken it upon themselves to rescue the random bits of shaft and nook-shaft which they find, presumably while gardening!
God knows what else they'd uncover if they delved too deep - there's a table tomb visible in the top photograph, so it looks like a few folks have decided to use the cloister garth as a final resting place in the past few hundred years....
And that's that. I have wrestled with the revamped Photobucket, and lived to tell the tale!