At about 40m long, Carlungie Earth House is one of the largest and most complex examples of its kind in Scotland. It was accidentally discovered during ploughing in 1949. Subsequent excavations during the following two years also revealed about eight associated stone dwellings at ground level.
Earth houses, or souterrains as they are also known, were not dwellings, but stone-lined underground passages which typically date to the Iron Age. They’re found along much of eastern Scotland, as well as in Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).