[1] It covered an area of about 5.5 acres (2.2 hectares) a short distance to the north-east of the modern Bank of England and had a resident population of about 60 friars.

A church stood at the centre of the friary precinct, with a complex of buildings behind it providing accommodation, refreshment and study space for the friars and visiting students.

In addition, some of the precinct and land immediately adjoining it was used to build rented tenements which were occupied by a number of notable figures including Erasmus, the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, and Thomas Cromwell, the principal official of King Henry VIII.

According to John Stow, the friary was established by Humphrey de Bohun, 2nd Earl of Hereford and Essex and Constable of England, on his return from the Seventh Crusade.

It housed a studium generale attended by students who aspired to go on to study at Oxford, Cambridge or one of the major continental European universities.

It incorporated a school and a library which were attended not only by English people but by foreigners resident in London, notably the Italians and Germans.

[9] During the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, thirteen Flemings who had been sheltering in the friary were taken out and lynched by the mob, though the friars themselves appear to have been left unharmed.

Five years later, a sermon to Lollards in the nearby church of St Christopher le Stocks (since demolished) about the practices and privileges of Augustinian monks almost led to the razing of the friary by that congregation.

The nave of the church survived until it was destroyed in The Blitz of 1940 and it was surveyed by the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments before the war, so a good deal is known about its original appearance and dimensions.

Just to the west of the guest hall was a porter's lodge, controlling access to the complex, while a refectory divided the north and south cloisters.

He expanded his holdings at Austin Friars, purchasing several surrounding properties outright at a cost of £550 – a very considerable sum for the time.

[33] The house was intended to serve several purposes: a domestic residence for Cromwell and his family, an administrative base and an urban palace where he could entertain important guests, potentially even the King himself.

The "copperplate" map of London, made in the 1550s, shows the imposing frontage of the house with three oriel windows above a large gateway.

[35] It is not clear how much of the garden had been completed while Cromwell lived at Austin Friars, but it is known that he planned to have a stables, a tennis court and a bowling alley constructed there.

In 1526, the Cantabrigian scholar and Augustinian friar Doctor Robert Barnes was punished for heresy at Old St Paul's Cathedral.

[40] Thomas Cromwell was a leading supporter of the English Reformation, indeed one of its principal masterminds, and found his neighbour the Prior to be sympathetic to his cause.

The Prior, George Brown, preached sermons in support of the King's unpopular divorce from Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Brown was later rewarded by Cromwell with work as a commissioner, whose job it was to visit all the monastic houses in the kingdom to assess them for piety and wealth before the dissolution.

[41] With the exception of the Prior, he will have found his neighbours to have been exemplars of exactly the kind of behaviour that made reform justified and necessary: anonymous disaffected members of the friary reported in 1534 on the neglect of services, drinking of alcohol, dining alone and the lack of any adherence to monastic rules.

[39] Sir William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester acquired the monastic buildings and built a town house on the site.

In July 1550, London's community of "Germans and other strangers" was granted the use of the friary church's nave to serve as the "Temple of the Lord Jesus".

[43] The rest of the church was turned into a storehouse for corn, coal and wine, with the monuments sold for £100 and the lead stripped from the roof.

Hilary Mantel's novels Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light create a fictional account of the career of Thomas Cromwell.

In chapter 29 of Charles Dickens's novel Martin Chuzzlewit, Tom Pinch is summoned to see Mr Fips in Austin Friars to be offered a position.