Blackfriars

Tucked along St Giles' just south of St Cross College, Blackfriars is the smallest sort of Oxford institution: a working priory that also runs a hall. Its formal name is the Priory of the Holy Spirit, and the building is home to a community of Dominican friars whose presence in the city dates back over eight centuries. The English nickname comes from the colour of the cappa worn over their white habits — a black cloak that has identified the Order of Preachers since the thirteenth century.

The original priory and its long gap

A party of Dominicans reached Oxford on 15 August 1221, a week or so after the death of Saint Dominic himself, sent here on the instruction of the order's General Chapter. By 1236 they had built a substantial priory south of the city wall, in what is now the St Ebbes district. The teaching tradition they brought with them predates Oxford's aularian houses by a century and its colleges by longer still — a point the modern hall is quietly proud of.

That medieval house did not survive the Reformation. The friars were dispersed when Henry VIII suppressed the monastic orders, and Oxford had no Dominican community for roughly four hundred years. The order only returned in 1921, when Bede Jarrett established a new religious house on the present site. The current priory building, designed by Edward Doran Webb, was finished in 1929.

The hall today

The modern relationship with the university grew slowly. The studium — the order's house of theological study — long admitted students who took Oxford courses without the hall itself being part of the collegiate structure. That changed in 1994, when Blackfriars was admitted as a Permanent Private Hall, giving it the same status as a college for matriculation and matriculated members. Today the hall takes a small number of students alongside the friars in formation, with strengths in theology and philosophy.

The studium also offers the Baccalaureate in Sacred Theology, a Roman pontifical degree awarded by the Angelicum in Rome — meaning a student here can begin a curial Catholic qualification without leaving Oxford.

Visitor info

Blackfriars is at 64 St Giles', on the west side of the street and a few doors down from St Cross College, with the university's research centre for classical and Byzantine studies as its immediate neighbour to the south. The priory church is open for daily Mass and the public is welcome at services; the hall itself, like other PPHs, is not set up for general tourism. The setting along St Giles' — Oxford's broadest avenue, lined with St John's College, the Eagle and Child and the Martyrs' Memorial at its southern end — makes for an easy walking detour.

Frequently asked questions

What is Blackfriars in Oxford?

Blackfriars is a Dominican religious community on St Giles', whose formal title is the Priory of the Holy Spirit. It runs Blackfriars Hall — a Permanent Private Hall within Oxford University — and a theological teaching centre known as the studium.

When did Blackfriars become a Permanent Private Hall?

The hall was admitted as a Permanent Private Hall within Oxford in 1994. The Dominican community itself has been on the present St Giles' site since 1921, when the order was refounded in Oxford after a gap of roughly four centuries; the building in use today was completed in 1929.

Why is it called Blackfriars?

The name reflects the black cloak — the cappa — that Dominican friars wear over their white habit. In Britain the word "Blackfriars" has long been used as a shorthand for a Dominican house, and several English towns have a Blackfriars street or quarter on the site of a former medieval Dominican priory.