The Benedictine Monastery
The Benedictine house was built in part upon the northern slope of a low hill, in part in the hollow through which the river Sherbourne flows. This was a situation well adapted for the building of a monastery; there was rich soil in the neighbourhood, good roads—both the Watling Street and the Foss Way ran within a few miles from the spot—and running water. The Sherbourne is but a small stream nowadays, but it was a more important watercourse in earlier times, and in the fifteenth century many precautions had to be taken "in eschewing peril of floods." The monks could stock Swanswell Pool[42] with fish, and plant their orchards or vineyards in or near the hollow in which the monastery lay.
CATHEDRAL RUINS
Little remains of the minster save the bases of a few clustered pillars of the thirteenth century, the remains of the west end by the Blue Coat School at the north end of S. Michael's Churchyard, and the fragment of the north-west tower, now incorporated in a dwelling-house in New Buildings. Under the gardens and pleasant red brick eighteenth and nineteenth century houses of Priory Row, which give the churchyard the look of a cathedral close, diggers often come upon fragments of ancient masonry, showing how the cathedral stretched down the slope of the hill. Between the cathedral and the southern bank of the Sherbourne were the Priory buildings, with the cloister garth, locutorium or parlour, synodal chamber and grammar school,[43] which last had an endowed existence as early as 1303.
CARVED MISERERE SEAT, S. MICHAEL'S CHURCH
Another relic of the monastery, a beautiful old timbered hostry or guest house in Ironmonger Row, was only cleared away in 1820. The inn known as the "Palmers' Rest" now occupies a portion of this site, and carvings of hunting scenes, and grotesques worked into the window frames, and now painted a dreary brown, were taken from the ancient guest house of the monks. Some of the obligations of hospitality were lifted from the monks by the foundation in the twelfth century of the hospital of S. John the Baptist, whereof only the church is left. Here poor wayfarers had food and lodging and the sick poor of the place were nursed and tended. The brethren were clothed in a black or dark brown garb, ample and flowing, and marked with a black cross, and the sisters wore a white veil and long closed mantles or cloaks. Another foundation for the nursing of the sick was the lazar-hospital at Spon, dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen, of which not a trace remains.