Blackfriars

The Dominican of Black Friars order was founded in 1217 by St Dominic and first arrived in England in 1221. The Friars Preachers were essentially teachers and evangelists, either travelling alone about the countyside or living communally in urban friaries. The Gloucester Black Friars was founded in 1239 on a site that had once been part of the bailey of the Norman castle. King Henry III became a major benefactor of the friary, granting timber for the roofs, not only from the nearby Forest of Dean but also from royal forests in Shropshire and Dorset.

In accordance with their role as teachers, the friars at Gloucester had the distinction of establishing a library, which is the oldest surviving in Britain today. The friary prospered through the next two centuries despite a series of scandals relating to the indiscipline of the
brethren. The house was in decline by the early sixteenth century with the former complement
of between thirty and forty friars reduced to a prior and six brethren living in extreme poverty
at the time of the Dissolution.

In 1539 Sir Thomas Bell, a wealthy Gloucester capper and clothier, purchased the property for £240.5s.4d. and set about remodelling the church into a private dwelling house with other buildings being converted into a cloth manufactory providing employment for over 300
townspeople. Bell died in 1566 and his wife a year later; the property then passed into the
hands of the Dennis family who held it until the late seventeenth century. Part of the cloistral ranges were turned into dwellings in the eighteenth century and other buildings housed a woolstapler and a stonemason’s workshop. The great hall was leased to an independent
church in 1780 and, by the early nineteenth century, a private school had been established here.

By the 1930s, Bell’s mansion had been divided into two separate houses and other tenants of the site included a printing firm and a mineral water manufacturer. The building is
recognised as the finest surviving example of a Dominican Friary in Britain.

Abstract from ‘Historic Gloucester’ by Phil Moss.
This book is available to purchase from Gloucester Tourist Information Centre and local book shops.