THE KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS
IN WILTSHIRE
ANSTY
ROCKLEY
The Knights Hospitaller at Rockley
After the suppression of the Knights Templar in the early 14th century, their Wiltshire estates passed to the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem. This included the former Templar holding at Temple Rockley, centred around the area now associated with Temple Farm / Top Temple Farm and Temple Bottom.
The Templars had first received land at Rockley in 1155–56, when John Marshal granted them one hide of land at Rocleia/Rokeleya. This estate included demesne land, tenant holdings, crofts, rents, and labour services. After the Templars were dissolved, the Hospitallers inherited this estate rather than receiving it as a new foundation.
By the Hospitaller period, Temple Rockley appears to have functioned as a modest religious and agricultural estate. Records suggest that the Hospitallers maintained a chaplain and a bailiff there, but not a resident preceptor. This implies a working estate centre with a chapel, farm buildings, tenants, and administrative oversight, rather than a large commandery or monastic complex.
The Hospitallers also held associated lands in the wider Rockley and Lockeridge landscape. A later Hospitaller survey records income from a dwelling, meadow, woodland, pasture for oxen, rents, and customary services. This shows that the estate remained economically active, based on arable land, meadow, pasture, livestock, and tenant obligations.
The chapel at Temple Rockley is especially significant. Earlier sources suggest that the Templars may have had a chapel near Temple Farm, and after the transfer of the estate the Hospitallers continued to use the site as a chapel until the Dissolution. The exact location of this chapel has not been securely identified, but the strongest candidate remains the Temple Farm / Temple Bottom area, where place-names such as Temple Farm, Temple Bottom, Temple Bottom Barn, Temple Covert, and Templar’s Bath preserve the memory of the medieval military orders.
There is no clear evidence that major new lands at Rockley were gifted directly to the Hospitallers after they received the former Templar estate. Their Rockley holding seems mainly to have come through the transfer of Templar property after 1308–12. Any later additions or changes were probably administrative, tenurial, or agricultural rather than a new foundation.
The Hospitaller estate came to an end at the Dissolution. By 1541, the Hospitallers’ lands had been taken into Crown hands, and the former Rockley property was granted to Sir Edward Baynton. Over time, the medieval religious estate became absorbed into later farms and landed estates.
Today, no standing Hospitaller chapel or commandery building is known to survive at Rockley. The most visible reminders are the landscape names around Temple Farm and Temple Bottom, together with traces of the old agricultural landscape. The present buildings in the area are later farm structures, but they stand within a landscape once managed by the Templars and then by the Knights Hospitaller for more than two centuries.
ROLLESTONE - St Andrews Church
St Andrew’s Church, Rollestone and the Hospitallers
The small medieval church of St Andrew at Rollestone, near Shrewton in Wiltshire, is one of the quieter survivals of the Hospitallers’ presence on Salisbury Plain. Built mainly in the early 13th century, it is first recorded in 1291, though elements of the fabric and the font suggest an earlier 13th-century origin.
By the early 14th century, the church was under Hospitaller patronage. The Order held the advowson of Rollestone, giving it the right to present the rector to the bishop for institution. This was not a commandery church in the usual sense, nor does the surviving evidence suggest a resident community of brethren at Rollestone. Rather, it appears to have formed part of the Order’s wider network of ecclesiastical rights and income-producing properties in Wiltshire.
The precise date and circumstances of the grant are not securely recorded in the readily available sources. It is therefore safest to say that the advowson was in Hospitaller hands by the early 1300s, rather than to assign it to a named donor. The Order retained the patronage until the Dissolution, when its English lands and rights passed away from it under Henry VIII.
Architecturally, St Andrew’s remains a modest but evocative parish church, built of flint and stone chequerwork, with a medieval font, 14th-century bell, later medieval windows, and Victorian restoration work from 1845. Declared redundant in 1992, it is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust and remains consecrated.
LOCKERIDGE -
The Knights Hospitaller at Lockeridge
After the suppression of the Knights Templar in 1308–12, their lands at Lockeridge — recorded in medieval documents as Locrugge or Lokeruga — passed to the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem. The Hospitallers did not found a new estate here from scratch. Instead, they inherited the former Templar lands that had originally been granted in the 12th century.
The main Templar holding at Lockeridge had come from Miles, Earl of Hereford, who gave the order two hides of land in Lokeruga. His charter also included a mansura, meaning a dwelling or messuage, which had formerly belonged to Richard de Saint-Quentin, one of Miles’s knights. Richard consented to the gift and received exchange land in compensation. This dwelling is especially important because it may be the same property later recorded by the Hospitallers as one dwelling at Lockeridge.
By 1388, a Hospitaller survey gives a useful snapshot of what the order held at Lockeridge. Their property included one dwelling, valued at 1 shilling a year; 10 acres of meadow, valued at 2 shillings per acre; a small woodland, worth 4 shillings; pasture for 300 oxen, worth 25 shillings; and rents and customary labour services worth £6 12s 3d. The total annual income was recorded as £20 7s 7d.
This shows that Hospitaller Lockeridge remained a working agricultural estate. Its value came from meadow, pasture, woodland, tenant rents, and customary services. The estate was probably managed as part of the wider former Templar property associated with Temple Rockley, rather than as a major independent commandery.
There is no clear evidence that the Hospitallers received major new gifts of land or buildings at Lockeridge after taking over from the Templars. Their holding appears to have derived mainly from the earlier Templar estate: the two hides, the former knightly messuage, and the associated agricultural land and services. Later changes were probably matters of management, tenancy, and valuation rather than new foundation grants.
The exact location of the medieval messuage at Lockeridge has not yet been securely identified. It may have stood within the historic settlement core, perhaps near the river and meadowland, where an estate dwelling would have had access to water, pasture, and arable land. Lockeridge House is a possible later successor site to consider, though the present house is Georgian rather than medieval. Castle Cottage is also significant as probably the oldest surviving building in Lockeridge, with evidence for a late-medieval open-hall house, although it cannot yet be linked directly to the Hospitaller or Templar messuage.
Today, no standing Hospitaller building is known to survive at Lockeridge. What remains is the historic landscape: the village, river meadows, old house-sites, and surrounding farmland. The documentary record shows that for more than two centuries after the Templars, Lockeridge continued to form part of the landed economy of the Knights Hospitaller, supplying rent, meadow, pasture, woodland, and labour services to the order.
CHIRTON
SWALLOWCLIFF
KNIGHT HOSPITALLER FIGURES AT WILTSHIRE
Wiltshire & the Hospitallers: Learn Who Shared Their Chapter of History Here
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Walter de Permart - Preceptor Ansty - 1281
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Reynold de Segrave - Preceptor Ansty - 1326
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John Dyngeland - Preceptor Ansty - 1338
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Cuthbert Leighton - Preceptor Ansty - 1534
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Johannes de Wyncestre - Ansty
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Willelmus West - Ansty
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Edmond Asheton - Prerceptor Ansty