The cloister occupies a considerable space of ground left open at the centre, where the lavatory was placed, and was enclosed on the north side by the church, and on the other sides by those various structures which had relation to the household economy of the monastery and to its domestic and political life. Around it, in the dormitory and refectory, the monks slept, lived, and ate. They studied in the library and in the small wooden chambers--carells, as they were called--one of which was placed in front of each compartment of the windows of the north alley, which, like the east one, was glazed, the latter containing in its windows the history of St. Cuthbert. In the west alley the novices had their school, where they were taught by the master of the novices, "one of the oldest monks that was learned," who had opposite to them "a pretty seat of wainscot, adjoining to the south side of the treasury door." In the treasury, situated at the north end of the crypt under the dormitory, and which is still divided by its ancient iron grating, were kept the title-deeds and other muniments of the church, in themselves no small treasure. At the other end of the same crypt was the common house, the only place where there was a fire for ordinary use, and which was frequented by the monks as their room for converse and recreation, and which had in connection with it a garden and a bowling alley. In the chapter-house on the east side the monks met the Prior between five and six o’clock "every night there to remain in prayer and devotion" during that time. Here also at other times they assembled in chapter to regulate all matters connected with the life within the body, and to order the many transactions which as a great corporation the convent necessarily had with the world without. Close by, on the one side of the chapter-house, out of which it opened, was the prison, where for minor offences a monk was confined; and on the other side was the passage through which his body was conveyed to his last home in the cemetery beyond.