The Welsh Knights Templar Today

The living order carries a title as long as its history: The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta of England and Wales and its Provinces Overseas. Beneath that long name sit two closely paired Christian chivalric orders — the Knights Templar and the Knights of Malta — organised entirely within Freemasonry.

They are not the medieval order returned. They are its heirs by inspiration: an eighteenth-century body that took the ritual, the regalia, the crosses and the ideals of the crusader knights and wove them into a new brotherhood. In Wales that brotherhood first appeared in 1812 and has been a constant of Welsh Freemasonry ever since.

One province, two crosses

Membership is open to Royal Arch Masons who profess the Christian faith. Candidates are almost always made a Knight Templar first, receiving the red cross of the medieval Order of the Temple; soon afterwards they are installed as a Knight of Malta and take up the eight-pointed white cross of the Hospitallers. The two ceremonies, joined at the hip, mirror the way the two medieval orders shared the same Welsh landscape — Templars first, Hospitallers after 1312.

The regalia is said to be the most striking in all of Freemasonry: white mantles crossed with scarlet, black Maltese surcoats, mediaeval-cut tunics and the plumed cap of a knight. Local units meet as Preceptories, the same word the medieval Templars used for their estate houses at Slebech and Garway.

The Province of Monmouth and South Wales

The Welsh Templar province stretches from Chepstow in the east to Aberaeron in the west, taking in the old Royal Arch provinces of West Wales, South Wales and Monmouthshire. It runs schemes to help new candidates with pre-owned regalia and keeps a full calendar of meetings across the coalfield, the coast and the border country.

Still in Jerusalem, in a way

The Hospitallers were founded to run a pilgrim hospital in twelfth-century Jerusalem. That thread is picked up today through the United Orders' sustained support for the St John Eye Hospital Group, still based in Jerusalem — a modern piece of charitable work with a very old address.

Find out more

The Province maintains its own website with meeting dates, contact details and news of its Preceptories.

Website: kt-msw.org
Enquiries: vice_chancellor@kt-msw.org