The medieval Greyfriars Church on Newgate Street — eventual burial site of Isabella of France and three other royal women — grew from a property donated in 1224 by a London mercer. Where was the original donated plot?
John Iwyn donated the small back-alley property — about 50 metres by 30, occupied by a single timber-framed house — to the newly-arrived English Franciscans in autumn 1224. The mission had nine friars who had landed at Dover that September with no property, no patronage, and no money. The single building grew through subsequent donations into the 90-metre stone second church (1306–1348) that housed the royal-women burials. The complex was destroyed in the 1538 Henrician dissolution and again in the 1666 Great Fire. Modern Newgate Street runs across the original site; the royal burials are still beneath the modern street pattern.
Read the full story →John Iwyn was a 13th-century London mercer who donated a small property on the southern edge of Newgate Street to the newly-arrived English Franciscans in 1224. The donation became the foundation site of the Greyfriars church and friary — the most important Franciscan foundation in medieval England and the eventual burial site of four major English queens.
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