The New Murrey and Blue blog

Now another Greyfriars in another cathedral city beginning with “L” is in the news. Greyfriars in Lincoln is to have £3 million of funding to be restored and re-developed. It’s thought to be the oldest surviving Franciscan friary building in the country, and there’s much more of it extant than the Greyfriars of Leicester.

Re-developed is a word that covers a multitude of sins, and you can read about it in this article. I have seen the new Greyfriars project as “an accessible multi-functional space for weddings, conferences, education and a café space for the community”. Given some of the flights of UK architectural fancy of recent decades, I can only hope that the integrity of the building remains intact, without the addition of acres of glass and luridly painted outside plumbing! But, unfortunately, anything goes these days.

Still, fingers crossed.