The website is grateful to E.Kt. Tony Cross of Plains of Mamre Preceptory No. 8 for this interesting submission and his photographs.
He writes……
I was working over in Leeds doing some inspections earlier on today and before coming back home took a detour to a Church I had seen online.
St Mary’s Church, Selby Road, Whitkirk, Leeds LS15 0AA
The have a stained glass window that has some KT features present.
The Vicar, Reverend Claire Honess, let me in and showed me around, explained some areas of the Church and was more than happy to let me take some pictures. I took quite a few actually!
Might make an item of interest for the website!
And indeed it does Tony. Thank you.
Our interest suitably piqued, we contacted E.Kt. Richard J. W. Binks, P.Gt.Her., who is the Provincial Sub-Prior of West Yorkshire to see if he had any further information about this interesting church. As an undertaker by profession Richard was very familiar with this building and was able to add some further information and thoughts as to its history.
The church is located near to Temple Newsam, a Tudor- Jacobean manor house. In the Domesday Book of 1086 the manor is listed as Neuhusam (meaning new houses) and was held by Ilbert de Lacy and his sons. Before the Norman Conquest of 1066 it had been held by Dunstan and Glunier, Anglo-Saxon thanes. In about 1155, Henry de Lacy gave it to the Knights Templar, who built Temple Newsam Preceptory on a site near the present house.
No part of the original Templar Preceptory remains, so although the history is real the stained glass in the church seems to be a modern recreation.
While the 15th-century medieval structure of St. Mary's underwent significant 19th-century Victorian restorations, most notably under G.E. Street and G.F. Bodley, the church's medieval history is commemorated through decorative stained glass paneling and heraldic glazing.
Stained glass panels within the church feature explicit Templar iconography, including the distinct red Cross Pattée (the red cross on a white field) and depictions of Templar knights on horseback.
Much of the stained glass depicting the Templar heritage was commissioned during the 19th and early 20th century restorations to celebrate the parish's unique history as a Templar manor.
The windows in the chancel and chapels also feature heraldic glass linking the church to the succession of estate owners at Temple Newsam — from the early Templar cross motifs to the coats of arms of the Scargill, Scrope, and Meynell-Ingram families who inherited or held patronage over Whitkirk following the order's fall.
The website is grateful to Tony Cross and to Richard Binks for providing the detail and photographs for this article. Clearly an interesting church and well worth a short visit if you find yourself in Leeds.