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Wealthy people sometimes gave money to establish
a college of priests to serve in a private chapel or in a parish church, and
to devote their time to prayer for the founder and his descendants. These
colleges were not monasteries but specially designed houses where the priests
could live, usually close to the chapel where they served. There was one at
North Cadbury and another at Stoke-sub-Hamdon, but the most interesting is at
Wells, where the houses, built in the middle of the fourteenth century for the
Vicars Choral (the priests who sang in the Cathedral choir) with their own
refectory and chapel, still stand in their ancient setting to the north of the
Cathedral.
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