Ipswich Whitefriars

Ipswich Whitefriars is the name usually given to the Carmelite Priory, a Catholic religious house, which formerly stood near the centre of the medieval town of Ipswich, the county town of Suffolk, UK. The Priory was founded in the 13th century (probably 1278-79) as an establishment of the Carmelite Order of White Friars, and stood until the 1530s, when its ancient revenues and endowments were depleted by Thomas Cromwell during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. In its heyday it was the home of many eminent scholars, supplied several Provincial superiors of the Order in England, and was repeatedly host to the provincial chapters of the Order. The site of the Priory is identified and has been exposed by excavation, but nothing now remains visible above ground.

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.

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