Visit Temple Cressing Barns - Templar Heritage

One of the giveaways revealing a former Knights Templar site in the British Isles is the name 'Temple' in a placename. One of the very best examples is Cressing Temple, a village in the county of Essex, north east of London.

Cressing Temple is a medieval site close to the villages of Cressing and White Notley. It was amongst the very earliest and largest of the possessions of the Knights Templar in England, and is open to the public as a visitor attraction.^[

The Knights Templar built two barns which are preserved as Grade I listed buildings; one of these medieval barns is claimed to be the oldest standing timber-framed barn in the world.

The manor of Cressing was granted to the Knights Templar in 1136 by Matilda of Boulogne, the wife of King Stephen. It is close to the main road between London and Colchester and the road between Witham and Braintree. The Preceptory of Cressing was therefore one of the very earliest Templar estates in England. It received further grants soon after its founding in the form of property at Witham sometime between 1138 and 1148, and was placed first in a detailed list of Templar holdings in 1185. It was the largest of their estates in Essex. Later, King John confirmed to the Templars at Cressing the land of Berecholt on 14 July 1199, and the land of Newland on 8 June 1214, as well as a market on Thursdays and a three-day-long fair at the feast of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist. Later, sometime before his death in 1255, the Templar Peter de Rossa granted over 100 acres of the manor of Rivenhall to Cressing, a parish in which he was parson and lord.

The original 1400-acre site was a considerable agricultural enterprise, and was led by a Templar Preceptor, accompanied by two or three knights or sergeants, together with a chaplain, a bailiff and numerous household servants overseeing around 160 tenant farmers. The manor had a mansion house, bakehouse, brewery, dairy, granary, smithy, gardens, a dovecote, a watermill, and a windmill, with a chapel and associated cemetery dedicated to St Mary. The proceeds from the Cressing Temple were all sent to fund Templar activities in the Crusader states in the Holy Land.

During the reign of King Edward II the Templar order was suppressed in England. In line with papal guidance, the Templar estate at Cressing was handed over to the Order of the Knights Hospitaller in 1309, who preserved the Templar documents and charters of Cressing amongst their own records.

The manor, controlled by a prior of the Knights Hospitaller, continued to work as a large estate. It was targeted in 1381 during the Peasants' Revolt, when on Monday 10 June a large group of rebels attacked Cressing and carried away armour, vestments, gold and silver, and other goods to the value of £20 belonging to the Hospitallers, and burned books to the value of 20 marks. This is intriguing, givn longstanding rumours that underground Templars helpd inspire or organise the Revolt. At the least, it strongly suggests the existence of a popular tradition that the Templars had been wronged and that the Hospitallers thus had no right to their ill-gotten gains!

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