Greyfriars Place

Greyfriars Place marks the area where the Franciscan order established their original Oxford friary in twelve twenty-four. The friars, known as the Grey Friars for their simple habits, arrived in the marshy parish of Saint Ebbe’s and eventually built a complex that stretched toward the city walls. This medieval site was a center of intellectual life where figures such as Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon studied and taught before the friary was dissolved during the Reformation in the sixteenth century.