Greyfriars, Worcester

Greyfriars, Worcester, was a Franciscan friary and school in Worcester, England. It is a Grade I listed building.HistoryGreyfriars'The Greyfriars' in Friar Street is the finest half-timbered building in the City. From the 13th century until the Reformation the street was dominated by a Franciscan friary from which Friar Street and Greyfriars both get their names. It was suppressed in 1530s when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.Franciscan friars were sometimes called Grey Friars because of their grey habits. The name of Greyfriars might have come from the house being wrongly associated, from the early twentieth century, with the old Friary, the last building the friars added.18th-century and 19th-century historians make no reference to No 9 being part of the Old Friary. In 1828 Ambrose Florence merely states ‘... large timber ribbed house adjoins the wall of the new city gaol...’ and in 1882 Littlebury dismisses the building as ‘a quaint old timbered building worth glancing at in passing...’. Official City Guides in the early 20th century also list No 9 under Old Houses, remarking ‘... one of the most interesting is the large structure in Friar Street supposed to have been an ancient hostelry’.However, The Victoria County History (eds William Page and J. W. Willis-Bund), published in 1924, says ‘... facing Friar Street is a fine two-storied building of timber, having a bold gable at either end and a gateway in the middle, over which is a window of not less than twelve lights. This house may only be the town house of some city merchant, but its position suggests that it belonged to the Grey Friars, and might have been their guest-house”. A further suggestion that No 9 may have been part of the Friary was in 1911 when a local historian, Lewis Shepherd, wrote in the journal of the Associated Archaeological Societies ‘... a considerable portion of the old friary still exists... it is of the early Tudor period...’. Without giving any reasons he implies that No 9 was the guest house of the Friary.