Blackfriars Lane

A narrow thoroughfare running between Southside Street and Hoegate Street, Blackfriars Lane suggests the presence somewhere in the area of an order of Dominican or black-robed friars. Sadly there is no written evidence to support this notion. The first time the name Blackfriars appears on any document we have record of is in 1755, more than 200 years after the dissolution of the monasteries and some thirty-eight years before the Plymouth Gin Distillery was established in the Old Marshalls in Southside Street. The building dates back to the fourteenth century and had a variety of uses down to 1793, but its only ecclesiastical connection appears to have been between 1689 and 1705 when it was used as a congregational meeting house. Nevertheless until 1975 Blackfriars Gin, with a little black-robed friar on its label, was produced here and gin is still distilled there today.

Attractive as the idea has been to historians it would appear that the only friars in this part of town were the Greyfriars, whose base was in the neighbouring New Street (itself once known as Greyriars Street).

In the late seventeenth century Blackfriars Lane appeared merely as “a lane from Great Hoe Lane towards the South side”.