The London street called Crutched Friars
I have lived in London now for over 40 years and one of the many reasons I love the city is because it is so old and so saturated in history. This week I visited a street in Central London that I have never even heard of before, the wonderfully named Crutched Friars.
The explanation of the name comes from this web site:
“The House of Crutched Friars, or Friars of the Holy Cross, at the corner of Hart Street, was founded by Ralph Hosiar and William Sabernes, about the year 1298. The founders themselves became friars of the order, and to them Stephen, the tenth prior of the Holy Trinity, granted three tenements for 13s. 8d. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Crutched Friars solicited the City magistrates to take the establishment under their patronage. At the dissolution the watchful emissaries of Cromwell caught the Prior of Crutched Friars flagrante delicto, and down at once went the king’s hammer upon the corrupt little brotherhood. The church was turned into a carpenter’s yard and a tennis-court, and the friars’ hall eventually became a glass-house. On the 4th of September, 1575, Stow says, a terrible fire burst out there that destroyed all but the stone walls.”
I was was actually joining some professional colleagues for lunch at the Lloyd’s Club which is housed in a splendid Georgian Grade II listed building. The club’s web site has this account of the origin of the friars:
“Crutched Friars were officially known as The Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross, referred to as Friars of England, which is a reflection of the name they consistently gave themselves: Fratres Sanctae Crucis. There were never more than 40 members at any one time, and indeed in over 300 years of their existence the number was less than 750 men of which only 150 have been identified. Historians have treated them as one of the “dim little Orders” and to speak of them as an exiguous and undistinguished body.”
