The court of the hospital is laid out in beautiful swards and beds of flowers and the houses seem to be pleasant residences. Before 1852 the land belonged to the Mildmay family, and then the hospital had only six poor cottages. Some arches are visible and stairs going down into a kind of kitchen from which an arch, still visible, communicated with another kitchen or refectory. If we pass through the chapel by the west door we find two Decorated windows (Henry III.), and enter the building containing this old chamber with a low arch and two large hearths. The hall is over the refectory and is a room of magnificent proportions, having its walls beautifully stuccoed with festoons of flowers. This would appear to date from the time of Charles II., whose picture, now in the Guildhall, was formerly here. St. John’s became the property of the Knights Templar, and on their suppression John Devenish refounded it for lame soldiers, poor pilgrims, and necessitous wayfarers. He had a charitable feeling towards the footsore. After Henry VIII.’s confiscation it was used for meetings of the Corporation. We learn from the Black Book that in the 38th Henry VIII. the supper was to be kept at St. John’s as amply as heretofore. On the Sunday next following the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the Mayor was to find a capon and so was the alderman of the High Street. In order to keep the “banket” up to the mark each of the benchers was to pay 12d., and each of the “Twenty four” 8d., whether they were present or not. This establishment had been confiscated by Henry VIII., and the buildings made over to the Corporation for the formation of a new hall. Various references seem to show that this chamber was now being slowly completed. In 21st year of Henry VIII. John Brown was to have a certain tenement in the hold of St. John’s upon condition of his giving twenty shillings towards building a new chimney there; and in 1560 the Mayor of Winchester who had been guilty of riding to Southampton without a servant,[41] and of committing other enormities, was ordered to glaze the west window of St. John’s Hall. This was not the present hall, for it has no window looking west, and the chimney was differently placed. To mend windows seems to have been here a common and useful civic punishment. I may here observe that the clerk who entered the civic transactions in the Black Book added a new saint to the calendar for he generally calls this hospital that of St. Jones.