Precinct

This chapter maps the Blackfriars, surveys its major streets and buildings, and introduces its principal residents. Henry VIII granted much of the dissolved friary to Sir Thomas Cawarden who built his own great house on the site of the friars’ church. He sold or leased other parts to fellow aristocrats as well as to humbler artisans who put the old cloisters to various domestic and work-related uses. Contrary to received opinion, the early modern Blackfriars was not an exclusively aristocratic enclave, but home to a diverse mixture of social groups, occupations, and activities. All these were closely interconnected in a physical environment of often jarring juxtapositions.