WIDEFLETE (Paris Gardens)

 

Wideflete, Southwark: the Templars’ Thames-side estate

Wideflete, later known as le Wyles and then Paris Garden, was a low-lying Thames-side estate in medieval Southwark. It lay on the south bank of the river, opposite the Templars’ New Temple in London, in the area now broadly represented by northern Blackfriars Road, Paris Garden, Hopton Street, Holland Street, Broadwall, and the riverside around the Oxo Tower and Blackfriars Bridge.

The manor of Paris Garden was later described as a little under 100 acres, roughly corresponding to the earlier hide of land called Wideflete. The area was marshy, flood-prone, crossed by streams and drainage channels, and valuable more for its water-management, mills, meadow, and riverside position than for ordinary arable farming. 

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Gift and ownership

Wideflete was not originally Templar land. In 1113, Robert Marmion granted the estate to Bermondsey Priory, apparently as a hide of land with a mill and appurtenances. Bermondsey later leased or granted it to the Knights Templar, and the agreement was confirmed by Henry II in the later twelfth century. The charter records the holding as a hide of land “upon the Thames” opposite the New Temple, with mills, resident men, waters, ponds, and all other appurtenances.

The Templars therefore held Wideflete from Bermondsey, not directly from the Crown. By the early fourteenth century they owed Bermondsey an annual fee-farm rent of 10 marks and 4 shillings.

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What the Templars held

The clearest description comes from the 1308 extent made after the arrest of the Templars. It records that at Wythiflete near Southwark the brothers had:

• a messuage, whose houses were weak and ruinous;

• a portion of land called a hide;

• one acre of arable land within that hide;

• three acres of meadow;

• curtilages, walls, and ditches;

• six water-mills, five described as weak or poorly equipped and a sixth unusable for want of apparatus;

• one acre in the field of Southwark;

• one acre of meadow in the marsh of Lambeth.

This was therefore a managed riverside estate, not a formal preceptory in its own right. Its main value lay in the mills, Thames frontage, meadow, watercourses, ditches, and enclosed yards.

By 1332, the holding was described as one acre of land and four water-mills, with a pasture in le Wyles upon the Thames, between Southwark and Lambeth. In 1337, these mills were specifically called “le Templemilnes” — the Temple Mills — situated on the bank of the Thames in Southwark, with a close called the Wyles adjoining them, and an acre called Temple Acre in the field of Lambeth.

Who was there?

The twelfth-century charter refers to the men living on the land. These were most likely tenants, millers, labourers, and estate workers connected with the mills, meadow, drainage channels, and riverside property. The 1308 record also mentions houses within the messuage, though by then they were in poor condition.

There is no firm evidence that a separate community of Templar brothers lived permanently at Wideflete. It was probably administered from the New Temple, directly across the Thames. A bailiff, rent-collector, miller, or lay official may have managed the estate locally, but the surviving record does not name such a person.

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Was there a chapel?

There is no clear evidence for a Templar chapel or church at Wideflete itself. This is important. Unlike places such as Temple Balsall or Temple Bruer, Wideflete appears to have been an economic Thames-side estate attached to the London headquarters, rather than a separate religious or preceptorial centre.

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The Hospitallers

After the suppression of the Templars, their former property eventually passed to the Knights Hospitaller. Later records connect Paris Garden with the Hospitallers, who leased out the manor. The estate was still remembered through its former Templar associations: the water-mills were called Temple Mills, and nearby land retained names such as Temple Acre. 

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Locating Wideflete today

The later manor of Paris Garden covered much of what is now the northern part of Blackfriars Road and the surrounding streets. The messuage was probably within the later Paris Garden manor-house area, around the southern approach to Blackfriars Bridge, near Blackfriars Road, Hopton Street, Paris Garden, and Holland Street.

The mills were more likely on the Thames-side edge of the estate, especially near the old Widefleet/Neckinger watercourse and the river bank. A cautious modern search area would be around Old Barge House Stairs, Broadwall, and the riverside near Oxo Tower Wharf, though no visible Templar mill remains survive. The later Old Barge House Stairs area is useful because it marks the historic river outlet of the Widefleet/Neckinger watercourse. 

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What remains today?

No standing medieval Templar or Hospitaller buildings are visible at Wideflete. The old streams, ditches, ponds, mills, walls, and messuage have disappeared beneath modern Southwark. The medieval estate is now represented only by the survival of place-names such as Paris Garden, and by the broad landscape of the South Bank around Blackfriars Road, Oxo Tower Wharf, Broadwall, and the Thames frontage.

Wideflete was therefore not a spectacular Templar commandery, but it was a valuable and strategic urban estate: a marshy Thames-side holding opposite the New Temple, equipped with mills, tenants, waters, meadows, ditches, and enclosed ground. It shows how the Templars’ London house was supported not only by great patrons and financial activity, but also by practical, income-producing property on both sides of the river.