The Order of the Temple was born of the Crusades. Founded in Jerusalem around 1119 to protect pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land, the Knights Templar grew within a single generation into one of the most powerful institutions of medieval Christendom. They were soldier-monks who took monastic vows yet bore arms, known across Europe by the white mantle and red cross granted to them by the Church.
Behind the fighting men stood a vast network of estates, churches, mills and farms, given by the pious and the powerful, whose rents and produce paid for the defence of the Holy Places. In an age of poor roads and uncertain banking, the Order also held money and valuables in trust, so that a pilgrim might deposit funds in London and draw on them in the East. It was, in its way, among the first international institutions of its kind.
The Templars in the North
In England the Order's lands were organised into preceptories, working estates that raised men, money and supplies for the wider mission. Estimates suggest the Templars held around sixty such houses across the country. The greatest concentration in the North lay in Yorkshire, where estates such as Temple Newsam, Ribston and Penhill were important enough for the Order to appoint a master for the whole county.
By comparison, the old county of Lancaster and the lands beyond it held no great preceptory of their own. The Templars were present here all the same, but through scattered manors, parcels of land and rents rather than a single commanding house. To understand their mark on our region, we must look first across the Pennine foothills, to a quiet village in Westmorland.
Temple Sowerby
The clearest sign the Templars left in our region is a place name still on the map today. The manor of Sowerby was given to the Order around 1228 by Robert de Vieuxpont, Lord of Westmorland and a former Crusader. The Templars held it for the best part of a century, and from them the village took the name it still bears: Temple Sowerby.
Their manor there is said to have been a self-sufficient estate with a hall, a watermill, workshops, barns and a small chapel, run for the benefit of the Order far away in London. The medieval chapel of ease recorded in the 1220s survives, much rebuilt over the centuries, as the parish church of St James.
The fall, and the Knights of St John
The Order's end came swiftly. From 1307 the Templars across Europe were accused, arrested and put on trial. In England the arrests began in 1308, and in 1312 Pope Clement V dissolved the Order altogether. Their lands did not vanish. After a period in the Crown's hands, most passed to the Knights Hospitaller, the Order of St John of Jerusalem.
At Temple Sowerby the manor went first to Robert de Clifford and then, in 1323, to the Hospitallers, who held it until the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII. It was afterwards bought by the Dalston family, whose seat was the house we know today as Acorn Bank, now in the care of the National Trust. Across Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmorland the former Templar properties were administered for the next two centuries as outlying parts of a Hospitaller estate based in Yorkshire.
This succession is easily muddled, and the distinction is worth keeping clear. A good deal of what is locally remembered as "Templar" in fact belonged to the Knights of St John who followed them, or to religious houses of quite different orders.
Tradition and the Lancashire connection
Lancashire has its share of Templar tradition. Local accounts have long linked the Order with Penwortham on the River Ribble, and with Preston, Wigan and other towns, and some speak of a preceptory at Penwortham itself. These associations are spirited and persistent, and they reflect a genuine local affection for the Order.
They should, however, be treated with care. Most rest on antiquarian and enthusiast accounts rather than the surviving records of the Order and the Crown, and several appear to confuse the Templars with the Hospitallers who succeeded them, or with houses belonging to other orders entirely. They are best enjoyed as tradition, and held lightly until firmer documentary evidence comes to light.
From the Temple to the present day
The medieval Order of the Temple did not survive the fourteenth century. Yet its name, its red cross and its ideals of faith, courage and service were never quite forgotten, and centuries later they were taken up again within Freemasonry. The modern Order, in full "The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta", deliberately unites the two great names of this story, the Temple and St John, within a single chivalric tradition.
The Provincial Priory of Lancashire follows the boundaries of the historic county of Lancaster together with Cumberland and Westmorland, the very ground across which the Templars once held their northern lands. In keeping alive the memory and the values of those soldier-monks, and in supporting charitable work such as the St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital, the Knights of Lancashire honour a heritage that, in this corner of England, can still be traced from a quiet Westmorland village to the present day.