The Blackfriars (also called Friars Preachers) were and continue to be focussed on prayer and liturgy, academic scholarship, preaching, teaching, and pastoral and charity work in urban areas.
[10][11] Its buildings consisted of a priory church (also dedicated to St Dominic) and a quadrangle cloister containing at least a refectory and a dormitory, and probably a chapter house, a library, a scriptorium and other monastic living facilities.
[16] The history of the priory is traceable through surviving records of donations, burials, chapter meetings, certain events like a major fire, and a large number of archaeological remains.
In 1285 John de St Omer, the mayor of Lynn, gave the friars 11 shillings worth of wine for their patronal feast (kept the 4 August 1285).
At some point one William Berdolf gave the friars a spring called Brookwell nearly 4 miles away at Middleton - from which they engineered a supply of fresh water to the priory.
[21] The following priors (superiors) of St Dominic's Priory King's Lynn are listed in the 1906 work ‘A History of the County of Norfolk’[22] In 1535 the house was the subject of a visitation report which recorded its assets and income.
[24] The Blackfriars estate (along with two other mendicant Houses in King's Lynn, Austinfriars and Greyfriars) was granted by Henry VIII to John Eyre, one of his auditors or receivers.
[29] The site is now occupied by a variety of Victorian and 20th-century commercial and residential property, the 1841 Baptist Chapel, and the St James Swimming Baths.
The first recorded archeological discoveries were made in 1841, a group of stone coffins dug up during the construction of the Blackfriars Street Baptist Church.