The Blackfriars church, which was dedicated to St Mary, disappeared within a century after the Dissolution, but the layout of the other conventual buildings, including some of the original structures, survived long enough to be illustrated and planned by Joshua Kirby in 1748.

[4] A modern understanding of the site emerged during the 1970s and 1980s, through scholarly interpretation and in excavations by the Suffolk County Council team,[5] by which the position of the lost Blackfriars church was recognized and revealed, much of the original plan was clarified or confirmed, and former misapprehensions were corrected.

Contrary to earlier antiquarian tradition, in 1887 it was shown decisively[8] that King Henry III established the Dominican friars at Ipswich in 1263.

[10] In the same founding phase Robert Kilwardby, who was appointed Provincial prior of the Dominicans in England in 1261 and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1272, acquired a messuage on behalf of the friars in 1269.

[25] Excavation in the priory cemetery revealed about 250 burials,[26] including a man's skeleton from which the right hand had been severed, the wound having healed in his lifetime.

[27][28] Dame Alice de Holebrok, widow of Sir John, was among the burials observed by Weever at the Ipswich Greyfriars, and should be of this Tattingstone family.

The priory lands accrued within this sector, with Foundation Street on its west side, and St Mary at Key to the south, within which parish it principally lay.

[33] In 1307 Alice Harneis (wife of the leading townsman and coroner Philip Harneis, who led the group for the re-writing of the Town Custumal,[34] and to whom the town Farm was committed[35]), assigned to the friars a plot of 200 ft by 36 ft which she held from Sir Payn de Tibetot, 1st Baron Tibetot (c. 1279–1314),[36] (of the patron family of the Greyfriars[37]).

Joshua Kirby's 1748 Prospect and Plan of the buildings on the Blackfriars site preserved an important record, but sustained the misapprehension that a medieval structure with tracery windows (left, middle distance, aligned north–south) was the original friary church, that the large hall behind it (upper left) had been the friars' refectory, and that the two-tier galleried courtyard shown to the back right (a post-medieval construction, the Christ's Hospital) stood on the site of the friars' cloister.

[43] In a study made in 1976 based upon contemporary understanding of English medieval priory construction, R. Gilyard-Beer observed that the supposed church was in fact the refectory or frater of the former Blackfriars, that the hall shown behind it had contained the sacristy, chapter house and dormitory, and that the courtyard between them was the true site of the friars' cloister.

[45] These deductions were amply confirmed by excavations, which revealed the footprint (now preserved) of a very substantial aisled church extending fully as predicted from the (western) Foundation Street frontage to the unaisled choir (58 ft) ending close to the former rampart in the east, and with the walking-place in the anticipated position.

[48] John Sell Cotman's wash drawing of the interior of the upper chamber or dormitory, after the schoolroom use ended in 1842, shows a view looking south, with the wall facing the cloister to the right.

[49] Upon excavation it was found that part of the wall now standing (which appeared to continue across the choir of the church), was a Victorian reconstruction using older materials,[50] and that section was accordingly removed.

The gable extension at the second window contained the raised lectern from which homilies or scriptures were read at mealtimes and (as Kirby's Plan shows) was approached externally by steps on the south side.

[56] The very copious bequests made to the friars of East Anglia show that the mendicants, who depended upon charitable donations for subsistence, were substantially favoured by the population they served throughout the 15th and early 16th centuries.

The Greyfriars closed first, where on 7 April 1538 the Visitor for the friaries, Richard Yngworth, Bishop of Dover, prepared an inventory and recovered certain church valuables which had been sold.

The conventual buildings were at first leased to William Sabyn,[61] King's serjeant-at-arms in Ipswich, whose land adjoined the friars' premises, and who is listed with the others in the minister's accounts of the Blackfriars rental.

Sabyn was a considerable figure,[62] a naval sea-captain and veteran of numerous engagements, controller of the Ipswich customs (in succession to Sir Edward Echyngham) in 1527,[63] Bailiff, Portman and M.P., and a benefactor of St Mary-at-Key.