THE TEMPLARS

IN HERTFORDSHIRE

TEMPLE DINSLEY

Temple Dinsley: A Hertfordshire Preceptory of the Knights Templar

Temple Dinsley, beside the village of Preston south of Hitchin, was one of the principal houses of the Knights Templar in Hertfordshire. Its medieval estate was not created by a single donation but was assembled through a succession of royal and aristocratic grants during the 1140s, followed by further gifts of land, tenants and rents. By the thirteenth century it had developed into a preceptory: a religious house, administrative centre and working manor whose income supported the wider activities of the Order.

Dinsley before the Templars

The Templars did not arrive in an empty or undeveloped landscape. Dinsley formed part of the wider medieval territory associated with Hitchin and the now-lost manor of Waylay or Wedelee. The district already contained cultivated land, woodland, tenants, craftsmen and watermills. Early charters refer to land formerly held by a smith and to existing mills with dependent land and inhabitants, showing that a functioning manorial economy was already in place.

The complicated medieval geography of the area must be treated carefully, since surviving records refer to several neighbouring estates called Dinsley. These included Temple Dinsley, Furnival Dinsley and another Dinsley associated with St Ippolyts. Temple Dinsley appears to have been formed from part of the older Waylay estate.

The first grants to the Templars

One of the earliest recorded gifts was made by John the Chamberlain in 1142. He gave the Templars one acre at Dinsley which had previously been held by a smith. King Stephen confirmed the donation, ordering that the brothers should hold it peacefully and with its customary liberties.

Around the same period, King Stephen made a more substantial grant of property worth forty shillings annually. This consisted of two mills, the land belonging to them and the people or tenants attached to the mills. The king granted these possessions in perpetual alms to the Templars and to Hugh de Argentine. The mills were therefore older than the preceptory: Stephen transferred established manorial assets rather than constructing new mills for the Order.

The principal landed endowment was made by Bernard de Balliol on 27 April 1147. Bernard granted the Templars the waste or underused land of Dinsley, connected with Wedelee, together with its woodland, open ground, tenants and associated rights. King Stephen confirmed this gift shortly afterwards.

The word translated as “waste” did not necessarily describe barren or uninhabited ground. It could include woodland, scrub, rough pasture and land outside the principal cultivated fields. Bernard’s grant specifically included both woodland and open land, as well as people living upon or owing services from the estate.

These donations were made as religious endowments. The language of the charters describes them as gifts to God and the Temple of Jerusalem in perpetual alms. The donors would have expected the spiritual benefit of the brothers’ prayers, while their gifts also supported the Templars’ work in the eastern Mediterranean.

Further land at Preston was later added by Oliver de Malvoisin. The Templar Inquest of 1185 records that four carucates or ploughlands in the Templars’ demesne at Preston derived partly from Bernard de Balliol’s gift and partly from Oliver’s. Other benefactors gave smaller holdings and rents in the surrounding district.

The development of the preceptory

The Templars reorganised these scattered grants into a substantial agricultural and administrative estate. By the beginning of the thirteenth century Temple Dinsley was certainly functioning as a preceptory, and it became sufficiently important for meetings and chapters of the English province to be held there.

The medieval complex is recorded as having included:

a hall;
a chapel;
residential accommodation;
a bakehouse;
a smithy;
barns and other agricultural buildings;
yards and enclosures;
a burial ground.

No medieval building now survives above ground, but archaeological discoveries include glazed floor tiles and a thirteenth-century Purbeck marble coffin lid decorated with a floriated cross. The coffin lid, now displayed in St Martin’s Church at Preston, was probably associated with a high-status burial, perhaps that of a preceptor. Evidence for burials and structural remains has helped identify the probable site of the Templar chapel.

An agreement made in 1218 with the nuns of Elstow, who held the advowson of Hitchin, required a chaplain to serve at Dinsley. Mass was to be celebrated on specified days and provision made for wax for the chapel lights. This confirms that the chapel was a functioning place of worship rather than merely a private oratory.

What the Templars held

The estate centred upon Temple Dinsley and Preston, but its resources extended into the surrounding countryside. The principal assets included:

four carucates of demesne land at Preston;
two watermills;
arable fields, meadow and pasture;
woodland and rough grazing;
tenant holdings and cottages;
cash rents;
compulsory labour services;
pannage and grazing rights;
transport and carrying services.

The 1185 Inquest gives an unusually detailed picture of the estate’s tenants. Some paid only cash rents, while others were required to plough, sow, reap and carry the Templars’ grain. Tenants performed additional labour during the autumn harvest, repaired hedges, transported goods and paid for access to pasture and woodland.

Several tenants were identified by occupation. Richard the Shepherd held seven acres and was required to hedge the brothers’ grain enclosure. Turstan the Carpenter held six and a half acres and had to make three wooden ploughs from timber supplied by the Order; the brothers fed him while he completed the work. The estate also included cottagers whose small holdings carried comparatively heavy weekly labour obligations.

Temple Dinsley was therefore both a religious house and a highly organised working manor. Its land, mills, woodland, rents and labour services supplied the household and produced surplus income for the Order.

The people of Temple Dinsley

The resident community would have included professed Templar brothers, but the majority of people living and working around the preceptory were probably tenants, servants and labourers. The household required a preceptor, chaplain, administrative officials, cooks, grooms and agricultural workers, together with millers, smiths, carpenters and shepherds.

A late record states that Temple Dinsley supported six Templar brethren and six corrodians or pensioners in 1308. The six brethren should not automatically be regarded as six knight-brothers. A preceptory might contain knight-brothers, sergeant-brothers and a chaplain-brother, while its wider household was considerably larger.

The site also accommodated visiting brothers and senior officials. Men travelled to Dinsley for chapters, administrative business and admission into the Order. Evidence from the later proceedings against the Templars records a number of reception ceremonies conducted in its chapel.

Templar brothers associated with Dinsley

The early charters preserve the names of several brothers connected with the administration of the estate.

Brother Osbert of Gloucester was involved in the early management or granting of property connected with Dinsley. He was active during the first half of the twelfth century and appears among the Order’s early English brothers.

A later charter was issued by Brother Richard of Hastings, Master or minister of the Temple in England. With the agreement of the brothers assembled in London, he confirmed hereditary land at Dinsley to Richard, son of Calward, in reward for services performed for the Order on a voyage to Ireland.

The witnesses to that charter included:

Brother Everard, chaplain;
Brother William de Colville;
Brother Gerard de Herdeberge;
Brother William de Bernewde;
Brother William of Worcester;
Brother Auco.

These men witnessed the decision at London and were not necessarily permanent residents at Dinsley, but their names demonstrate that the estate was administered through the central structures of the English province.

Later brothers connected with ceremonies or official business at Dinsley included Richard Peitevin, who stated that he had been received into the Order in the Dinsley chapel. His evidence confirms the chapel’s use for formal admissions.

Brian de Jay, Master of the Temple in England during the later thirteenth century, conducted admissions there. Brothers named in accounts of ceremonies at Dinsley include Thomas of Toulouse, Richard de Herdwick, Roger de Reyley, Ralph de Malton and Thomas Tocci of Thoroldesby. Their presence does not prove that each lived permanently at the preceptory; many were visitors attending a chapter or reception.

The surviving records therefore distinguish three groups: brothers who administered the estate, brothers who resided there, and senior officials or visitors who attended chapters and admission ceremonies. The identities of all six brethren present at the time of the arrests in 1308 cannot presently be established with equal certainty.

Why Temple Dinsley mattered

Temple Dinsley’s importance rested upon more than the value of its farmland. It provided the Templars with a secure base in a productive part of Hertfordshire, close to Hitchin and within reach of their other regional estates.

Its functions included:

administering land, tenants and rents;
producing grain, livestock and timber;
collecting income from mills;
accommodating travelling brothers;
holding provincial meetings and chapters;
receiving new members into the Order;
providing worship and burial within its chapel precinct.

The preceptory also connected local people with the Order’s wider network. The charter concerning Richard son of Calward records that a man from the Dinsley estate had crossed to Ireland and returned while serving the Temple. Temple Dinsley was therefore linked administratively not only with London but with the Templars’ possessions beyond England.

Arrest and suppression

In January 1308, following instructions from Edward II, the Templars in England were arrested and their property seized into royal custody. Six brethren were recorded at Temple Dinsley at this time. The Order was formally suppressed by Pope Clement V in 1312.

The papacy intended the Templars’ estates to pass to the Knights Hospitallers, but the transfer in England was delayed by royal custody and competing claims. Temple Dinsley eventually passed to the Hospitallers in 1324.

The Hospitallers did not immediately maintain a large permanent community there. The property was at first subject to a life interest and was later administered as a Hospitaller estate. By the later Middle Ages it was increasingly leased to tenants, and in 1507 the manor was let privately.

From the Hospitallers to the modern estate

The Hospitallers retained ownership until their English possessions were suppressed under Henry VIII. In 1542 Temple Dinsley was granted by the Crown to Sir Ralph Sadleir, royal secretary, diplomat and servant of Henry VIII. The medieval buildings were gradually altered, reused or replaced by later manor houses.

In 1712 the estate was purchased by Benedict Ithell, who rebuilt the principal house in 1714. The present building is therefore not a surviving Templar preceptory, but an early eighteenth-century country house occupying the historic estate.

In 1908 the owner, H. G. Fenwick, employed Sir Edwin Lutyens to remodel and enlarge the house. Lutyens added substantial cross-wings and worked with Gertrude Jekyll on the formal gardens. The house became Princess Helena College in 1935 and remained in educational use until the school closed in 2021. The house, gardens and park are now protected as a Grade II* registered historic landscape.

What can be seen today?

No standing medieval building can be securely identified as part of the Templar preceptory. Visitors should therefore understand Temple Dinsley principally as an archaeological site and historic landscape rather than as a surviving Templar complex.

The principal visible remains and associations are:

Temple Dinsley House and gardens
The present house dates mainly from 1714, with extensive additions by Lutyens. Its formal gardens and surrounding parkland preserve the setting of the historic manor, although their visible design is post-medieval.

The probable chapel and cemetery site
Buried foundations and recorded burials indicate the approximate position of the medieval religious precinct, but nothing substantial remains above ground.

The Temple Dinsley coffin lid
The thirteenth-century Purbeck marble grave cover with its floriated cross is displayed in St Martin’s Church, Preston. It is one of the most important surviving objects associated with the preceptory.

Medieval floor tiles
Decorated glazed tiles recovered from the estate are preserved in the collections of North Hertfordshire Museum at Hitchin.

The names Temple Dinsley and Temple End also preserve the memory of the Order within the modern landscape.

Conclusion

Temple Dinsley developed from an established medieval manor rather than from unoccupied land. Its foundation was created through several gifts: John the Chamberlain’s acre in 1142, King Stephen’s two mills and their dependent estate, Bernard de Balliol’s major grant of woodland and open land in 1147, and later additions made by benefactors including Oliver de Malvoisin.

The Templars transformed these holdings into a productive preceptory containing a hall, chapel, smithy, bakehouse, agricultural buildings and cemetery. Its tenants cultivated the demesne, maintained the estate and provided rents, labour and specialist skills. A relatively small community of brothers lived there, while senior Templars and visitors attended chapters and admission ceremonies.

After the arrests of 1308 and the suppression of the Order in 1312, Temple Dinsley eventually passed to the Knights Hospitallers. Following their suppression, the estate was granted to Sir Ralph Sadleir and developed into a country house. Although the medieval buildings have disappeared, archaeological remains, decorated tiles, the coffin lid at Preston and the surviving historic landscape continue to preserve the memory of one of Hertfordshire’s most important Templar houses.

TEMPLE CHELSING -

The site is known today as Bengeo Temple Farm and Chelsing Farm, two farms located roughly halfway between and to the north of the villages of Tonwell and Wadesmill, the latter being a listed historic monument. From the Templar and Hospitaller periods, nothing remains except for the moats surrounding Bengeo Temple Farm. As for Chelsing Farm, the current building dates from the mid-17th century.

Chelsing was originally one of the manors held around Bengeo by Lord Geoffrey de Bech, before passing in the 13th century to the de Tany family, who came from Saint-Aubin-du-Thenney and were then vassals of the Lords of Bournein Lincolnshire. The acquisition of this estate by the Templars was relatively late. It was first partially leased from 1253, before being purchased outright by the Templars in 1269, a transaction carried out by Humbert de Pairaud.

From 1278 onward, the Templars held assizes on the site, modified seigniorial dues on bread and beer, and even erected a gallows there.

The transfer of the Templars' assets in England was relatively contentious, and despite the papal bull Ad providamissued in 1312, the Hospitallers had to wait until 1324 for the English Parliament to officially recognize their rights to the major Templar properties. However, in the case of Temple Chelsing, it appears the transfer took place as early as 1313.

The property seems to have become a simple farm attached to the Commandery of Standon, as it is mentioned only in that commandery’s cartulary thereafter.

The Protestant Reformation in the 16th century led to the suppression of the English Langue by King Henry VIII in 1540 and the annexation of all its assets by the Crown. The estate was then granted to Sir Ralph Sadleir in 1542, and his son Henry inherited it in 1587, selling it in 1595 to Sir Philip Boteler.

Although Temple Chelsing was a Templar fief, the documents from the trial of the Order of the Temple do not allow us to confirm that it was ever a commandery, even if that seems likely. There is no record of any admission ceremonies, chapters, or preceptors associated with the site

BALDOCK

Baldock: The Hertfordshire Town Created by the Knights Templar

Baldock is one of the most remarkable surviving examples of the Knights Templar’s influence upon an English town. Unlike Temple Dinsley, which served as a residential and administrative house of the Order, Baldock was principally developed as a planned market borough. Its rents, shops, fields and market dues provided income to support the Templars’ religious and military work.

The gift of Baldock

Between 1138 and 1148, probably during the 1140s, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, granted the Knights Templar a substantial area of land from his manor of Weston. The gift also included interests in the church of Weston and the rights and resources belonging to it. It was later confirmed by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, whose wife inherited the de Clare estates.

Like many medieval grants to religious orders, Gilbert’s gift was intended to support the spiritual and charitable mission of the Templars. The Order, however, recognised that the land occupied an excellent commercial position near the meeting of the Icknield Way and an important route running north from London.

Building a new town

Rather than using the land only for agriculture, the Templars developed it into a borough. Broad sections of what are now High Street and Whitehorse Street formed elongated market spaces, while streets and back lanes provided access to long burgage plots containing houses, workshops, yards and gardens.

An early thirteenth-century confirmation stated that the Templars had:

“constructed a certain borough which is called Baldock”

and had greatly increased the value of the property. The parish church stood prominently near the meeting of the principal streets. Although it is possible that the cross-shaped street plan carried Christian symbolism, it may equally have resulted from the practical redirection of existing roads into the market town.

The Templars had established a licensed market at Baldock before 1185. Its privileges were confirmed by Richard I in 1189 and King John in 1199, helping to attract traders and customers from the surrounding countryside.

What did the Templars hold at Baldock?

The Templars were not simply owners of a few houses. They were the town’s lords and received income from:

burgage plots, houses and messuages;
shops, stalls and workshops;
arable holdings in the surrounding fields;
the market and its commercial dues;
the church of Baldock;
rents paid by the townspeople;
manorial courts and local legal rights.

The Templar survey of 1185 records that the church of Baldock produced an annual cash income of ten marks, in addition to grain received through tithes.

By 1287, the Master of the Temple also claimed extensive manorial authority at Baldock, including the view of frankpledge, jurisdiction over local pleas, a gaol and enforcement of the rules governing the quality and price of bread and ale.

The people of Templar Baldock

Baldock should not be imagined as a settlement filled with armoured Templar knights. Its population consisted mainly of ordinary householders, clergy, merchants and craftspeople who rented their property from the Order.

The 1185 survey records approximately 117 tenants and at least seventeen different occupations. Among them were smiths, tanners, shoemakers, garment-makers, a weaver, a saddler, a carter, cooks, chaplains, clerks, a mercer, a merchant and a goldsmith.

Named inhabitants included Gilbert the goldsmith, Richard the smith, Terri the tanner, Osbert the shoemaker, Ralph the saddler, Theobald the merchant and Gilbert the mercer. Others were identified by their places of origin, including Richard of Hereford, Godwin of Cambridge, Ailwin of Essex, John of London and several people from nearby Therfield, Stotfold and Clothall.

Many tenants held a house plot within the town together with half an acre, an acre or more in the surrounding fields. This allowed craftspeople and traders to supplement their income by growing crops or keeping animals.

The records do not identify Baldock as a major resident preceptory containing a large community of Templar brothers. It appears instead to have been a commercially valuable Templar borough, probably administered by bailiffs and other local officers under the wider supervision of the Order.

St Mary’s Church

The Templars probably founded or helped establish the medieval church of St Mary the Virgin, appropriately dedicated to the Virgin Mary, patroness of the Order.

Very little of the earliest church can now be identified with certainty. The present Grade I listed building contains a thirteenth-century eastern chancel, double piscina and octagonal font, but much of the nave, aisles, chapels, tower and porch belongs to rebuilding undertaken during the fourteenth century, after the Templar period. Further work followed in the fifteenth century.

St Mary’s should therefore be understood as a church with Templar origins, rather than a completely preserved Templar building.

Within St Mary’s Church is a worn medieval Purbeck-marble memorial associated with Sir Reginald de Argentein, who died in 1307, shortly before the arrest of the English Templars.

Its surviving inscription describes Reginald as a “Knight of St Mary” and asks those who see the monument to pray for his soul. Because the Virgin Mary was the patroness of the Knights Templar—and because Baldock was a Templar town—the inscription has traditionally been interpreted as evidence that Reginald was himself a member of the Order.

The de Argentein family were important Hertfordshire landholders with connections to Baldock and nearby Great Wymondley. A Robert de Argentein is also recorded as a tenant at Baldock in the Templars’ survey of 1185, although the precise relationship between him and Reginald is uncertain.

Despite the long-standing tradition, no surviving document securely identifies Reginald as a Knight Templar. The expression “Knight of St Mary” may instead indicate membership of another religious fraternity or simply reflect a particular devotion to the Virgin Mary.

The safest interpretation is therefore that the monument commemorates Sir Reginald de Argentein, traditionally believed to have been a Knight Templar, although his membership of the Order remains unproven. Nevertheless, his memorial is one of the most intriguing surviving medieval features in the church and an important part of Baldock’s Templar tradition.

What happened after the Templars?

The English Templars were arrested in 1308, and the Order was formally suppressed in 1312. Baldock and many other former Templar possessions were subsequently granted to the Knights Hospitaller, although the transfer was neither immediate nor straightforward.

The Hospitallers continued to benefit from the town, manor and church until their English estates were taken by Henry VIII during the Reformation.

What survives today?

No securely identified Templar hall, commandery or domestic building survives above ground at Baldock. The clearest evidence of the Order is instead found in the fabric and shape of the town:

the broad medieval market spaces of High Street and Whitehorse Street;
the arrangement of streets and back lanes;
surviving boundaries of long burgage plots;
the position of St Mary’s Church at the heart of the settlement;
thirteenth-century elements within the church;
the town’s continuing identity as a market centre.

Baldock’s greatest Templar monument is therefore not a ruined castle or preceptory. It is the town itself—a settlement planned, populated and developed by the Knights Templar more than eight centuries ago.

CODICOTE

PRESTON

HITCHIN

St. ALBANS

ROYSTON

STAGENHOE

WESTON - Church

The Knights Templar at Weston Church, Hertfordshire

The medieval church at Weston, now dedicated to the Holy Trinity, has one of the earliest recorded connections with the Knights Templar in Hertfordshire.

Before 1148, Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, granted the church of Weston to the Templars, together with land and rights belonging to his manor there. Gilbert had been created Earl of Pembroke in 1138, so the gift was made during the earliest period of Templar expansion in England.

A surviving charter issued by Gilbert confirms that the church was to enjoy its traditional liberties:

“in woodland and in open land, in waters and in meadows.”

Gilbert ordered his local officials to ensure that the church held these rights more freely and peacefully than it had done before. These privileges may have included access to pasture, meadow, watercourses, woodland resources and other benefits attached to the estate.

Why was Weston important to the Templars?

The Templars did not rely solely upon donations of money. Their estates, churches, farms and rents in England produced income that helped support the Order’s religious and military work overseas.

Weston formed part of a wider group of Templar possessions in northern Hertfordshire. Gilbert de Clare also granted the Order valuable land nearby, from which the Templars developed the new market town of Baldock.

Weston church therefore stood within an important Templar landscape that included agricultural land, tenants, tithes and market income.

The income of Weston Church

The Templar estate survey of 1185 records that the church of Weston produced an annual income of three and a half marks from its altar revenues.

This probably included offerings and customary payments associated with the church and its altar. The account specifically excluded the value of grain received through tithes, meaning that the church’s full income was greater than the cash sum recorded.

The Templars also held the church’s advowson, giving them the right to present a priest when the living became vacant. They may also have received part of the rectorial income while local clergy carried out the daily spiritual care of the parish.

Did Templar knights live at Weston?

There is no clear evidence that Weston was a large Templar preceptory or that a permanent community of knights lived beside the church.

The church and its estate were probably administered as part of the Templars’ wider Hertfordshire possessions. Local priests, chaplains, tenants and estate officers would have carried out much of the everyday work, while Templar officials supervised the property and collected its income.

Weston should therefore be understood as a Templar-owned parish church and estate, rather than as a fortified military house.

The medieval church

Weston church retains important Norman features, including its cruciform plan, central crossing tower and north transept. Parts of the surviving building may belong to the period when the church was held by the Templars.

However, it is difficult to identify any surviving feature as definitely constructed by the Order. Medieval churches were altered repeatedly, and Weston underwent later rebuilding during the Hospitaller period and in the nineteenth century.

The safest conclusion is that the Templars inherited, maintained and possibly developed an existing twelfth-century church, although the precise extent of their building work is unknown.

After the Templars

The English Templars were arrested in 1308, and the Order was formally suppressed in 1312. Weston church and its associated rights later passed to the Knights Hospitaller of St John, who held the church and its income as part of their wider estate around Weston, Lannock and Baldock.

The Hospitallers retained their interest until their English properties were taken by Henry VIII during the Reformation.

What remains today?

No Templar tomb, domestic building or carved Templar cross has been securely identified at Weston.

The surviving evidence is found instead in:

the medieval fabric of Holy Trinity Church;
the Norman crossing and north transept;
the documentary record of Gilbert de Clare’s grant;
the Templar survey of 1185;
and the church’s place within the wider Templar landscape of Weston and Baldock.

Weston Church is therefore an important reminder that the Knights Templar’s presence in medieval England was not limited to castles or military houses. Parish churches, farmland, rents and tithes were equally important in sustaining the Order and its work.

LAUGENOK (Lannock Manor)

Manor granted to Knights Templars by Gilbert de Clare before 1148, passed to Hospitallers in 1309 and remained theirs until the Dissolution c.1540. A chapel standing a little to SSW of house is shown on the drawing of 1804 with 4 lancet windows, corner buttresses, and pitched roof in use as a barn, but demolished before 1875

RADWELL - Mill

TEMPLAR FIGURES AT HERTFORDSHIRE

Knights Templar at Hertfordshire