almost at the present junction of Effingham and Saxon Streets. Of its estimated area of about , about square of this were its cloisters, with a chapter house joined to the church's transept's north wall, and about an eighth was a refectory. It had an impressive scriptorium and library which vanished from the records at the Dissolution - parts of it re-appeared on the open market later and are now in colleges of the University of Cambridge, including the Dover Bible (one of only six surviving giant Romanesque Bibles) in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi. Dissolution In 1538 it was suppressed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The inventory made of the Priory's goods just beforehand suggest that the monks were living in straitened circumstances by that time (although that may be a fictional pretext for dissolution), but that some provision was still made for the entertainment of visitors to the town. After its suppression, leading townsmen plundered the buildings for stone, lead and other building materials, leaving just two barns, the gate-house, the refectory and a large hall still standing. Fishermen speaking in court in 1565, said that they had in the past taken their tithes of fish to the Priory "whiles it stood". These buildings were adapted to agricultural use (apart from the 'large hall', which might have been used to house guests). The town records (the new poor law demanded that vagrants be rounded up periodically by the mayor and his officers for questioning and then usually ejected from the town) show that one of these buildings, known as the "Priory Barn", was frequently used as a refuge for vagrants, particularly at times of poor harvests, plague and low employment such as the 1590s and 1620s. This may have been because of a folk memory of a time when the Priory, like other religious houses, was a place of refuge and hospitality for the poor. Its lands were granted first to a cleric called Richard Thornden or Thornton, but passed on shortly afterwards to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer when Thornton received an important benefice. In December 1538, Cranmer leased them out to Henry Bingham of Wingham, gentleman, on a 999-year lease, who then (as the Archbishop had always done when the monastery was still active) in turn leased them out to others. Probably some active, entrepreneurial men who were later to become very influential in the life