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The great Claustro do Silencio at Alcobaça was, as an inscription tells, begun in the year 1310, when on April 13th the first stone was laid by the abbot in the presence of the master builder Domingo Domingues.
Probably the plan of the church, and perhaps the eastern chapel and lower part of the transept, are the work of Affonso Domingues, and all the peculiarities, the strange windows, the cusped arches, the English-looking pinnacles, as well as all the constructive skill, are due to Huguet his successor, who may perhaps have travelled in France and England, and had come back to Portugal with increased knowledge of how to build, but with a rather confused idea of the ornamental detail he had seen abroad.
The first architect, Affonso Domingues, perhaps a grandson of the Domingo Domingues who built the cloister at Alcobaça, is said to have been born at Lisbon and so, as might have been expected, his plan shows no trace at all of foreign influence.
But though it is easy enough to show that the plan is not English but quite national and Portuguese, it is not so easy to say what the building itself is. Affonso Domingues died in 1402, and was succeeded by a man whose name is spelt in a great variety of ways, Ouguet, Huguet, or Huet, and to whom most of the building apart from the plan must have been due.
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