THE TEMPLARS
IN WILTSHIRE
TEMPLE ROCKLEY
The Knights Templar at Rockley
In the mid-12th century, Rockley became one of the Wiltshire estates associated with the Knights Templar. The order’s holding here began in 1155–56, when John Marshal granted the Templars his land at Rokeleya/Rocleia, held of Earl Patrick, “free and quit from every secular service” for the support of the Holy Land of Jerusalem. The charter was later sealed at the Exchequer in 1159.
This grant amounted to one hide of land at Rockley. It was not simply a symbolic donation. Later estate records show that the Templars held one ploughland in demesne — land farmed directly for the estate — while the remaining land was held by local tenants who paid rents.
A surviving rental records the Rockley tenants as follows: Richard held 5 acres for 30 pence; Alwi held 5 acres for 30 pence; William held 5 acres for 30 pence; Thomas held 5 acres for 30 pence; Aldred held 5 acres for 30 pence; Johnheld 5 acres for 30 pence; Osbert held 5 acres for 30 pence; and Hereward held 5 acres for 30 pence. Eve held one croft for 12 pence. The recorded total for this Rockley holding was 5 pounds, 20 shillings, and 2 pence.
These names are valuable because they give us a rare glimpse of ordinary medieval people connected directly to the Templar estate. Most held small five-acre parcels, while Eve held a croft, showing that women could also appear in estate records as tenants or rent-payers.
The Rockley estate was connected with wider Templar lands nearby. At Locrugge, now Lockeridge, Miles, Earl of Hereford, gave the Templars two hides of land, together with associated holdings. Other records mention land at Berwick and related appurtenances. This means “Temple Rockley” was not just a single isolated farmstead, but part of a broader agricultural estate spread across Rockley, Lockeridge, Berwick, and neighbouring downland.
The centre of the Templar estate is usually associated with Temple Farm / Top Temple Farm in Temple Bottom, near grid reference SU 137727. Place-names such as Temple Bottom, Temple Farm, Temple Bottom Barn, Temple Covert, and Templar’s Bath preserve the memory of the order’s presence. Historic sources suggest that the Templars may have had a chapel here, probably at or near Temple Farm, although no surviving chapel building has been securely identified.
The buildings at Temple Rockley were probably those of a working religious estate: a chapel, a farm or grange complex, barns, yards, stock buildings, and accommodation for estate officers. After the suppression of the Templars in the early 14th century, the property passed to the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem, who maintained a chaplain and bailiff at Temple Rockley. This suggests a modest religious and administrative centre, rather than a large monastic or castle-like site.
The estate economy was based on the classic Wiltshire downland pattern of corn and sheep. Records mention arable land, meadow, pasture, sheep-milking, shearing, washing, mowing, reaping, and autumn boon-works. The wider Rockley landscape included open fields in Dean Bottom and Temple Bottom, meadow in the Hungerbourne valley, and extensive chalk downland pasture.
Temple Rockley was therefore a working Templar grange and estate centre, embedded within the wider manor of Rockley. Its importance lay not in monumental buildings, but in land, rents, sheep, grain, and local administration. The clearest traces today are the enduring “Temple” place-names around Temple Bottom and Temple Farm, and the surviving medieval records that preserve the names of the people who lived and worked on the estate.
LOCKERIDGE - Lands
The Knights Templar at Lockeridge
In the 12th century, Lockeridge — recorded in medieval documents as Locrugge or Lokeruga — formed part of the wider Templar estate associated with Temple Rockley in Wiltshire. The Templars held land here as part of a dispersed agricultural estate of arable fields, crofts, meadow, pasture, rents, and labour services.
The principal grant was made by Miles, Earl of Hereford, who gave the Templars two hides of land in Lokeruga. His charter says that he granted the land as freely and quietly as he had held it in his own demesne.
Importantly, the grant also included a mansura — 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 messuage is significant because a later Hospitaller survey of 1388 records one dwelling at Lockeridge. This may well represent the same house-site originally included in Miles’s gift to the Templars. Its exact location is not known, but it was probably a substantial estate dwelling or farmstead rather than an ordinary cottage. It may have served as the local house-site from which the Lockeridge lands were managed.
The Templars’ Lockeridge lands were divided among local tenants. A surviving rental records the following holdings: Clement held one croft and 2 acres for 18 pence; Alexander held 10 acres for 6 shillings; Albrida held 10 acres for 6 shillings; Richard held 5 acres for 3 shillings; Walter held 5 acres for 3 shillings; Martin held 5 acres for 3 shillings; Hervey held 5 acres for 3 shillings; Godwin held 5 acres for 3 shillings; and Gunild held one acre and a croft for 14 pence. The same tenants also paid 2 shillings for an assart, land cleared for cultivation, and 6 pence for a further 4 acres.
These names give a rare glimpse of the people who lived and worked on the Templar estate. Most were small agricultural tenants, but the record also preserves the names of women such as Albrida and Gunild, who appear as rent-paying landholders.
The tenants owed more than rent. The customs of Locrugge required payments and services at key points in the agricultural year. Holders of virgates owed produce at Michaelmas, payments for pigs, and autumn boon-works with two men. Five-acre tenants owed hens at Martinmas and harvest labour. Cottars owed hens and labour services. Some tenants also owed a sheep or its cash equivalent if they did not have a fold. These obligations show that Lockeridge was part of a working Templar estate based on arable farming, livestock, harvest labour, and customary dues.
After the suppression of the Templars in the early 14th century, their Wiltshire lands passed to the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem. A Hospitaller report of 1388 gives a later snapshot of the Lockeridge estate: one dwelling worth 1 shilling a year, 10 acres of meadow worth 20 shillings, a small woodland worth 4 shillings, pasture for 300 oxen worth 25 shillings, and rents and customary services worth £6 12s 3d. The total annual value was recorded as £20 7s 7d.
The exact site of the medieval Templar messuage at Lockeridge has not been securely identified. It may have lain within the historic settlement core, perhaps near the river and meadowland, where a substantial house-site would have had access to water, pasture, and arable land. Lockeridge House is one possible successor site to consider, as a later high-status house near the River Kennet, but the present building is Georgian rather than medieval. Castle Cottage is especially important because it appears to be the oldest surviving building in Lockeridge, with evidence of a late-medieval open-hall house, although it cannot yet be linked directly to the Templar messuage.
Today, the Templars’ presence at Lockeridge is not marked by standing Templar buildings, but by the shape of the landscape and the survival of documentary records. The medieval evidence reveals a small but organised estate community: a former knightly dwelling, tenant crofts and acre holdings, meadow, woodland, pasture, and named men and women whose rents and labour supported the military religious order at Temple Rockley and, ultimately, the wider Templar mission overseas.
WESTCOT
BERWICK BASSETT
CHIRTON
