The arrangement of the various buildings was very simple. Foremost in importance ranked the _church_, which was always the first building to be erected and that on which the greatest wealth was lavished. To the south of this were attached the domestic buildings, grouped round a central _cloister court_. Of these the most important were the _chapter house_, in which the monks assembled each morning to hear a chapter from the Latin rules of their Order; the four _cloisters_ or covered walks in which the daily tasks of the monks were performed; the _frater_ or _refectory_, in which their midday meal was served; and the _dorter_ or _dormitory_, in which they slept. This last ran above the line of buildings to the south of the south transept, and had a staircase leading directly into this as well as one leading into the east cloister. [Illustration: THE CISTERCIAN ABBEY OF KIRKSTALL. _From ‘Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society,’ Vol. III._ ] The other buildings included the _sacristy_ or treasure-house; the _library_; the _locutorium_ or parlour, which was a meeting-place for conversation as well as a school for the novices; the _infirmary_ for sick monks; the _calefactory_, or warming-house, where a fire was kept burning from the first day in November till the following Easter; the _kitchen_; the _cellarium_ or store-room; the _hospitium_ or guest-house; and the _Abbot’s house_. Attached to each House of the Cistercians was a band of _conversi_, or lay brethren, the uneducated portion of the community, who did all the rough work of the House. Their frater and dorter were separate from the other buildings, the dorter running over the cellarium; and they attended service in the nave of the church, whereas the monks used the choir or chancel. Such was the general plan of a Cistercian monastery or nunnery. That of the Benedictines did not differ from it except that their churches were larger and more magnificently built than those of the Cistercians, and their fraters ran east and west instead of north and south. Look at the outer wall of the south aisle of Bridlington Priory Church, and you will at once notice something strange. The windowless wall and blocked arches are due to the fact that the Abbot’s house adjoined the church at this spot. Look along the wall farther to the east, and you will see plainly the brackets on which once rested the roof beams of one of the four cloisters.