DORMITORY (

See also:

• LAT

Lat. dormitorium, a sleeping

See also:

• PLACE (through Fr. from Lat. platea, street; Gr. IrAar6s, wide)

place)  , the name given in monasteries to the monks' sleeping apartment . Some-times it formed one long room, but was more generally subdivided into as many cells or partitions as there were monks . It was generally placed on the first floor with a direct entrance into the church . The dormitories were sometimes of great length; the longest known, in the monastery of S . Michele in Bosco near Bologna (now suppressed), is said to have been over 400 ft . In some of the larger mansions of the Elizabethan period the space in the roof constitutes a long gallery, which in those days was occasionally utilized as a dormitory . The name " dormitory " is also applied to the large bedrooms with a number of beds, in schools and similar modern institutes .