Cambridge Blackfriars

Cambridge Blackfriars
The front of the priory
Cambridge Blackfriars is located in Cambridge
Cambridge Blackfriars
Location within Cambridge
Monastery information
Full namePriory of St Michael the Archangel
OrderDominican Order
Established1238
Disestablished1538
Reestablished1938
Dedicated toMichael the Archangel
DioceseEast Anglia
People
Founder(s)Sebastian Bullough (1938)
PriorRobert Verrill
Important associated figuresAidan Nichols, Richard Finn, Yves Congar
Site
LocationBuckingham Road, Cambridge, CB3 0DD England
Coordinates52°12′50″N 0°06′33″E / 52.21376°N 0.10924°E / 52.21376; 0.10924
Public accessLimited, but accessible after Daily Mass
WebsiteBlackfriars Cambridge
Cross

Cambridge Blackfriars is a priory of the Dominican Order in Cambridgeshire, England. It was established in 1238, dissolved in 1538 and re-established in 1938.[1] It continues to operate as a Dominican priory and, in 2000, became the novitiate house of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.

The new site is at Buckingham Road, Cambridge, close to Murray Edwards College. Two existing houses were linked by a new wing in 1961-2 designed by David Roberts. The original house was offered to the Order in 1938 by the widow of Professor Edward Bullough. The second house, Howfield, the family home of Arthur Stanley Ramsey, was bought in 1955.

The medieval Dominican Friary was founded before 1238. At the time of its dissolution in 1538, there was a prior and fifteen others. The last prior Gregory Dodds was later Dean of Exeter. A friar John Scory in 1551 became a bishop in the Church of England. Emmanuel College was founded on the site in 1584 and the college's Front Court incorporates 14th-century work from the Friary, in the North Range and Hall.[2]

Statue of the virgin and child in the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs, reputed to have been removed from the Dominican Friary

The statue of the virgin and child now in the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge is reputed to have been in the Dominican Friary before the dissolution. In 1538 John Hilsey sent Gregory Dodds to Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister, to request that the image of Our Lady of Grace be removed from the friary. The statue now in the church is said to have been discovered in Emmanuel College[2][3] in 1850.

  1. ^ "Medieval Priory".
  2. ^ a b Salzman, L. F., ed. (1948). "Domincans, Cambridge". A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely. Victoria County History. Vol. 2. Oxford and New York: University of London Institute of Historical Research, Oxford University Press. pp. 269–276. OCLC 10778399.
  3. ^ Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England (1959). An inventory of the historical monuments in the City of Cambridge. London: HMSO. pp. 298–304. OCLC 858489102.