The various orders of friars were essentially a mission targeted at
towns. The Church wished to use the friars to set an example of
Christian values associated with modest lifestyle (to the point of austerity)
and charitable behaviour. The friars played an important role in town life:
preaching in public settings, providing spiritual services, their
cemeteries offered sites for burial of townspeople, and they assisted
in the improvement of living conditions through (for example) the
creation of conduits for bringing in fresh water. They were popular
with townspeople, as evidenced by the many bequests and gifts of land to
them.
At Lynn, as in many other towns, it was in the thirteenth century that
the friars established a presence. However, already the areas of
Bishop's Lynn and
Newland closest to the waterfront were
already densely built up. Most of the friaries therefore
built up what became quite extensive sites on the outskirts of the heavily
settled areas in the eastern half of the area enclosed by the ditch/wall.
The White Friars, however, acquired a site
in sparsely settled South Lynn, along the western side of the road leading
to the South Gate.
Little remains today of these friaries since, after the Dissolution, they
were abandoned and their building materials were scavenged for use
elsewhere. A tower
of the Franciscan friary still stands, and one of the gateways, once-ruinous
into the Whitefriars precinct also survives. The gateway was called
Barfotesgate and led from the northern side of the friary into a road
heading for the bridge across the Millfleet.
