The Kitchen (opposite to the Hall) may sometimes be visited when the daily routine permits. The whole has been recently modernised, and a picturesque open fire with rotating spits done away with. To gain more air-space it was necessary to incorporate in the Kitchen some rooms in the floor above. One of these was the set occupied during his College life by the poet Wordsworth, and the fact is commemorated by a stained-glass window. [Illustration: The Library: St. John's Coll:] CHAPTER III THE HOSPITAL OF ST. JOHN CIRCA 1135-1511 St. John's College, as we know it, was founded in 1511, and opened in 1516. But at the time of its foundation it took over the buildings and property, and many of the duties, of an earlier and then a venerable foundation, that of the Hospital of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge. The origin of the old house is obscure, and its earlier history lost, but it seems to have been founded about 1135 by Henry Frost, a burgess of Cambridge. It consisted of a small community of Augustinian canons; its site was described about 140 years later as "a very poor and waste place of the commonalty of Cambridge." Whatever its early history and endowments may have been, it formed a nucleus for further gifts; and its chartulary, still in the possession of St. John's College, shows a continuous series of benefactions to the old house. Founded before the University existed, the brethren were occupied with their religious duties, and with the care of the poor and sick who sought their help. An Infirmary, part of which was adapted for worship, was built. In the thirteenth century a chapel was added, afterwards adapted as the College Chapel, and used as such down to 1869. Of the domestic buildings practically nothing is known. When some years ago trenches were dug to lay the electric cables for the lighting of the Hall, some traces of a pavement of red tiles were found near the entrance gate of the College.