The domestic buildings--as was always the case with the Benedictines, and St. Swithun’s was a Benedictine house--were grouped on the south. The cloister garth was a square enclosure, south of the nave, roofed overhead and flagged below, but otherwise open to the air, with the open lavatory or general washing-place in the centre. This was the monks’ usual place of resort, except when the services in church or special duties called them elsewhere. Here, half in the open air, they read, they studied, laboured at the occupations of the scriptorium, the illuminated missal or book of the ‘Hours.’ Here was their library, and here the _magister ordinis_ held his school for novices, a school where the instruction, however, was not, as is commonly supposed, the humanities or even divinity, but the rule of the order of St. Benedict, to be, to the monk, from the moment he had taken the vows, more than his conscience. Here in the cloister, too, the monks enjoyed such minor relaxations as fell to their lot. Here they took their ‘meridian’ or mid-day siesta; and here, for all the world like great schoolboys--whenever, that is, the prying eyes of Sacrist or Precentor were not upon them--they even indulged at times in harmless but unauthorized gossip and “snatched a fearful joy.” Grouped round the cloister garth--their site now occupied by canons’ houses--were the domestic buildings proper: the kitchen to the west, the refectory on the south. On the east--its Norman arches still in part standing--was the Chapter House, where the Prior held a chapter daily for the regulation of the internal routine, and for the admonition or correction of offenders against the discipline. South of this, where now the Deanery stands, were the Prior’s quarters. Farther to the east were the sleeping quarters, the ‘dortour’ or common dormitory, the sick house or infirmary, and so forth; while standing by itself at some little distance in the outer court--Mirabel Close as it was called--was the Pilgrims’ hall, where the poorer pilgrims were lodged, and now almost the only part of the domestic buildings of the monastery still standing.