The Temple Church

Yesterday I once again led a group of students from the CBL International programme at Oriel on a tour of Legal London.

When we had finished I found myself outside the Temple Church, which, unlike the situation on most of my previous visits was open, so I paid my couple of pounds and had a leisurely walk round this remarkable survival from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The round nave of the Temple Church, with the choir to the right.
The column in the right foreground is a modern memorial to the Order of the Temple erected by the Inns.

Image: roundaboutlondon.wordpress.com

The late twelfth century round nave, built by the Knight Templar and modelled or inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, together with the now replaced choir, was consecrated on February 11th 1185 by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem, as is recorded in a Latin inscription over the west door.

In the nave are series of  effigies of nobles with connections to the Order, the most famous being that of

William the Marshal Earl of Pembroke who died in 1219 as Regent of England for the young King Henry III. His career is recounted in the Song of William the Marshal written soon after his death. Unfortunately the effects of the bombing in 1941 resulted in some damage to the effigies, as can be seen from displays of older photographs in the church, but they are still very moving as a record of part of the elite of thirteenth century England.

The chancel was replaced by a larger aisled one in 1240, apparently with the intention of it being the burial place for King Henry III and his Queen. Although one of their infant sons is buried there it was of course his rebuilding of Westminster Abbey from 1245 that led to that becoming the medieval royal necropolis.

 

The view from the nave into the choir

Image: a-london-tourist-guide.com

 

 

Inside the church are reconstructed plans of the site as it is thought to have been when used by the Templars before their suppression in 1312. One thing I learned from these was the fact that the Knights had their jousting or training ground on what is now the site of the Royal Courts of Justice.

Transferred to the Knights Hospitaller after 1312 and seized by the Crown in 1540 the church was formally given to the tenants of the buildings adjacent, the Inns of the Inner and Middle Temple by King James I  in 1608, on condition that they maintained the building, which they have done. On display in the church was a photograph of a charter of renewal of the grant from the present Queen in 2008.

On May 10th 1941 the church and both Inns suffered bomb damage, which was graphically brought out by some of the photographs on display. The devastation of the Inner Temple was particularly serious, which lost its nineteenth century Hall and many adjacent buildings, and the church itself was burnt out.

The post-war restoration, completed in 1957, is  good, though I perhaps regret that the mid-nineteenth century neo-medieval colour scheme was not reproduced - that is no doubt more what would have been there originally. However the restoration did allow for the reinstatement of surviving seventeenth century furnishings removed in the Victorian period and preserved in storage.

There is more about the church and its history here.

The Chaplain bears the title Master of the Temple and like the church belongs to both Inns. One of his late sixteenth century predecessors, who is  commemorated by a modern monument in the church, was Richard Hooker, the codifier of Anglican ecclesiology.

The church is very well worth seeing, as indeed are both of the two Inns, and the other two which are north of the Strand, Lincoln's and Grey's.

Legal London

Last Wednesday I had a day in London with a summer school with whom I have been doing some work. As they were international lawyers the day was built around a series of visits to the legal world of London, although we included a visit for them to be photographed outside Buckingham Palace and the route took in Westminster and Whitehall so as to give a brief opportunity to explain and illustrate the workings of the British constitution.

Starting from Lincoln's Inn Fields we walked through Lincoln's Inn to the Royal Courts of Justice. I had not properly realised that these are open for visitors to look round, and it is a complex of buildings well worth visiting, both for the grandeur of G. E. Street's design and for its insights into the working of justice.

The Great Hall of the Royal Courts of Justice

Image: willswithoutpain

In the lunch break I went off and explored the Middle and Inner Temple, which I had not previously visited, although I had been to both Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn on other occasions. Each of the four Inns has its own character and all repay visiting. The Inner Temple suffered particularly badly in the Blitz, including the burning out of the Temple Church. This was restored but is currently undergoing a further restoration which meant that I could not go inside. Nevertheless it was possible to view the exterior.

The circular nave of the Temple Church

Image: Alan Mothersole on http://www.london-city-churches.org.uk/

The west doorway is a very handsome piece of Norman work, and invites one to pause and reflect on all that it has witnessed in the history of the site.

The west door of the Temple Church

Image:past-caring.com/temple_church

Having rejoined the party and escorted them to the Law Society for a presentation I had time to explore further, walking up Chancery Lane to Holborn, past Gray's Inn and looking at the remains or sites of several of the Inns of Chancery, which originally provided accomodation for the clerks of Chancery - which was based where the former Public Record Office is in Chancery Lane -and then provided the initial education for future barristers before they joined one of the Inns of Court. I regret the disppearnce after their long history of these other Inns, several of which survived until the beginning of the twentieth century. On my stroll I noted the site of Furnival's Inn, looked again at the attractive surviving buildings of Staple Inn, and found in Fleet Street the entrance to Clifford's Inn.

I had a further exploration of the Inner and Middle Temple, walking out into Essex Street, the site of the Strand home of the Devereux Earls of Essex, and the adjacent site of Arundel House, walked round the exterior of St Clement Danes, noted the site of Clement's Inn and went back for a further look at Lincoln's Inn. The last of the Earls of Lincoln who gave their name to it died there in 1310 and was the last of the Lacy lords of Pontefract, so once more a connection to my home area.

As with my visit to the area around St Paul's in July the day was a reminder of just how much can be seen inn a small area of London, and the fact that even if properties have been rebuilt many times over there is a continuity with the past that is fascinating. The corporate memory, and of course one would expect that with lawyers, has sustained that, so that an afternoon's walk is a lecture or seminar in itself.