ABSTRACT
In the period between perhaps the tenth and fourteenth centuries, the precinct of Gloucester's Old Minster underwent a process of substantial expansion. The precinct of Worcester Cathedral certainly changed in extent and form in the same period and–beween the late eleventh and early thirteenth centuries–was reduced and then expanded again. At Worcester, the Bishop's Palace lay within a physically discrete enclosure in that precinct's north-west corner. It took the form of an ecclesiastical salient projecting into the town. By the mid fourteenth century, Worcester contained two friaries and Gloucester three. The establishment of the mendicant orders in these towns took place over more than a century, spanning the 1230s to the 1340s. The Gloucester Dominicans created a new way through to the principal frontage in 1246 in the first phase of the development of their precinct; Satires Lane, which gave access northwards to Smiths Street may already have been in existence to serve the castle.
