The Order of the Temple in Wales · 1145 – 1312
The Knights Templar in Wales
For nearly two centuries the Templars farmed the fields, ran the ferries and managed the estates of south and west Wales. This is a working guide to what they left behind.
The history
How the Templars arrived in Norman Wales, what they did here, and why they left.
Read moreEvery known site
A full gazetteer — from Slebech and Templeton down to the outlying granges and chapels.
Read moreWeekend itinerary
A driving route that connects every major Templar site over two days.
Read moreThe Knights Templar are usually pictured on crusade, sword in hand, riding across the deserts of the Holy Land. Their Welsh chapter looked nothing like that. Here the order farmed, milled, fished and collected rents — quiet work that kept the war in Outremer paid for. For a hundred and seventy years the white mantle with the red cross was a familiar sight in Pembrokeshire, on the Gower, and along the borderland, until the whole order was dissolved by papal decree in 1312.
The Sites
Seven key sites
The seven Templar and Hospitaller sites with enough surviving fabric or landscape to justify a special visit — from the border church at Garway to Slebech in Pembrokeshire and the great Hospitaller churches of the Gower peninsula. The full gazetteer covers the outlying granges and dependencies as well.
Pembrokeshire
Slebech
The mother house of the Templars in Wales — a preceptory on the tidal Cleddau, granted by the Anglo-Norman lord Wizo before 1150 and continued as a Hospitaller commandery after 1312.
Pembrokeshire
Templeton
A whole village whose name — Villa Templi in the medieval rolls — records that the Templars once held it as a farming grange of Slebech.
Welsh Marches
Garway (Borderland)
Just over the border in Herefordshire, Garway is the most complete Templar church in Britain — and served the order's estates on both sides of the Welsh frontier.
Gower
St Madoc's Church, Llanmadoc
The Gower's Templar church — a small medieval church at the tip of the peninsula, held as a Templar manor and continued by the Hospitallers after 1312 as a dependency of Slebech.
Gower
St Mary the Virgin, Rhossili
The clifftop church above Rhossili Bay — given, with Landimore and Llanrhidian, to the Knights Hospitaller of Slebech by William de Turberville in the 12th century.
Gower
St Cadoc's Church, Cheriton
A finely-built 13th-century church near the Burry stream — probably built by the Knights Hospitaller to replace the lost coastal church at Landimore.
Gower
St Rhidian and St Illtyd, Llanrhidian
The Hospitaller church of north Gower, with its massive fortified west tower and mysterious carved 'Leper Stone' in the porch.
Field Notes
From the Chronicle
Before Wales: the birth of the Order
Long before a Templar boot touched Welsh soil, nine knights in Jerusalem swore an oath that would build an empire of farms and ferries from Pembroke to Palestine. Part I, Chapter 1 of the Templar Wales history.
Welcome to Templar Wales
Why a website about the Knights Templar in Wales — and what you'll find here as it grows.
Why Slebech matters
If you visit one Templar site in Wales, make it Slebech. Here is why the little ruin beside the Cleddau is the key to the whole story.
Coming soon
The Templar Wales ebook
Everything on this site, expanded and edited, in a single downloadable volume — with a full gazetteer of every known Templar holding in Wales and a printed driving itinerary. Sign up to the Chronicle to be told when it goes on sale.