Temple Church, Bristol

The leaning tower and walls of this large late medieval church in Bristol, UK, survived bombing during the Second World War. Temple Church is so called because the original church here was built by the Knights Templar.

Their round church was later replaced with a more spacious rectangular one, and the shape of the first church is marked out in the ground.

The 12th-century church was a Templar preceptory, built on land granted to the Templars by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, sometime in the two decades before his death in 1147.

The 12th-century church had a round nave, with an aisle arcade, and a chancel with a semicircular apse. This chancel was replaced with a rectangular one, with a chapel added to its north side in Decorated style, in the late 13th or early 14th century.

Famous for its leaning spire, the church, as it was after the Second World War, has been left as a memorial to the bombardment of the Bristol Blitz - the church was one of many buildings hit in the Bristol Blitz of November 1940 to April 1941.

It has stood empty since.

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