Ipswich Whitefriars - Foundation and Site

Foundation and Site

The foundation is attributed by William Dugdale to Sir Thomas de Loudham (but by John Speed to Lord Bardesley, Sir Jeffrey Hadley and Sir Robert Norton), and to the date 1279. The founding was simultaneous with the Carmelite house at Winchester (1278), closely following a Carmelite provincial chapter held at Norwich. King Edward I visited Ipswich in 1277, and in 1279 passed the Mortmain Act which gave many benefits to the Carmelites. The Order did not recognise the principle of filiation, so that Ipswich was not a daughter-house of Norwich, but looked only to the authority of the General and Provincial chapters. However, the first members of the new community were probably chosen from among those of Norwich.

The site chosen was in the centre of the town, in an area south of the Buttermarket street and north of Old Foundry Road, at first to the east of St Stephen's Lane and afterwards over much of the area from St Stephen's Lane westward toward Queen Street. This block corresponds roughly to the area occupied by the modern Ipswich Buttermarket shopping centre, erected c.1990. The Priory lay on land of St Nicholas and St Lawrence parishes, though the Priory Gate (known as 'Stonehams') was in St Stephen's parish. During the Buttermarket excavations of 1987, the plundered footings of the Carmelite priory church were identified (beneath the site of the Buttermarket centre frontage), aligned at right-angles to St Stephen's Lane and with its east front overlooking the lower part of the lane.

St Stephen's Lane formed part of an ancient street leading north through Ipswich from a ford of the river Orwell, but its function as a northward route out of town had been curtailed since the building of the town ramparts during the 10th century. (A rubble-built wall running along the west side of this road, north and south, thought to be part of the Whitefriars perimeter wall, was seen during excavations in 1899.) The Carmelites obtained the right to enclose a town lane 150 yards long in January 1297 (when King Edward was again in Ipswich), and further purchases of land or alienations were made to them c.1316, 1329 and 1332: a final enlargement was made by a purchase for 100 marks by Prior John Reppes in 1396.