The Franciscan friars

Unlike the older orders of monks, who lived secluded lives within their monasteries, friars went out into the wider community, tending to the spiritual needs of lay people.

From their beginnings in the early 13th century, friaries quickly spread throughout Europe. There were several orders of these preacher-monks, but the main two were the Franciscans and Dominicans. The Franciscans were founded by an Italian merchant’s son, Francis of Assisi (1181–1216; later St Francis) and were called grey friars after the cloaks they wore as a symbol of their vow of poverty.

Friars mostly lived in urban monasteries, going out into the town or city to preach, hear confessions and take part in funeral services. In Gloucester as in other towns, friars became an important part of the spiritual landscape – of the nine medieval religious houses in Gloucester, three were friaries.

The friars had no personal property, and early friaries were simple retreats. But as the friars caught the popular imagination, donations poured in. Gradually, at Gloucester and elsewhere, they built large friaries, with grand churches and solid cloisters, just like the other monastic orders.

The Tudor church

The Tudor monastic church of the 1520s had two equal spaces that together formed the nave, where Gloucester townsmen and women went to listen to the friars’ sermons. At the east end was a single space, the choir, where the friars performed their daily cycle of services. The whole church was about 75 metres long.

The surviving church consists of the two large nave spaces, which are separated by an open arched arcade (now partly blocked by later walls). Each space was lit by seven large windows on the long sides; five of the seven bays survive today. The two westernmost bays are now incorporated in the early 19th-century Greyfriars House.

The chancel arch, which led into the choir, is at the east end of the southern space. At the east end of the northern space are the remains of a large six-light window. Unlike the earlier church, the 16th-century church had no tower.

Few new monastic churches were built during the Tudor period, which makes this an unusual building in itself, but it is also notable for other reasons. The architect was aiming for modernity, emphasising the symmetry of the two nave spaces in place of the usual arrangement of three spaces – a nave flanked by narrower aisles to south and north. 

While the architect or patron embraced up-to-date Perpendicular architecture, they also followed local tradition by basing the windows on 14th- and 15th-century examples at Gloucester Cathedral.

Conversion and demolition

The Gloucester alderman and MP Thomas Payne (who had assisted the king’s commissioner in 1538) bought the closed friary in 1544. He converted it into his private mansion and lived there until his death in 1560.

Among his other adaptations to the friary Payne seems to have established a brewhouse in the northern part of the old nave. Archaeological excavations revealed traces of a horse-powered malt-crushing mill and brewery vats, suggesting that this was a commercial business, not just supplying his household.

Tensions between King Charles I and Parliament erupted into the English Civil War in 1642 and, with Royalist and Parliamentary armies fighting for control of the west country, the king besieged Gloucester in August 1643. The Parliamentarian commander of the city, Sir Edward Massey, was quartered at Greyfriars and many buildings – including Greyfriars – were damaged by Royalist cannon fire. It may well have been during or soon after the Civil War that the east end of the church was demolished.

By the 19th century the former nave had been divided into about five separate houses, including the substantial townhouse at the west end, Greyfriars House, which survives today.