There is a refectory, in which the members of the community eat in common on two or three festivals in the course of the year.

On these occasions only is any speech or oral communication between the members permitted.
There is a library tolerably well furnished with historical as well as theological works.

But it is evidently never used.

Nor is there any sign that the little gardens are in any degree cultivated by the occupants of them.

I remarked to George Eliot on the strangeness of this abstinence from both the two permitted occupations, which might seem to afford some alleviation of the awful solitude and monotony of the eremitical life.