The wheat barn at Cressing Temple, Essex - geograph

Cressing Temple is a medieval site situated between Witham and Braintree in

Essex Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...

, close to the villages of Cressing and

White Notley White Notley is a parish in Essex, England. The settlement (which includes the outlying hamlet of The Green) lies equidistant between the towns of Witham and Braintree amongst arable farmland, in each direction. White Notley is a quintessenti ...

. It was amongst the very earliest and largest of the possessions of the

Knights Templar , colors = White mantle with a red cross , colors_label = Attire , march = , mascot = Two knights riding a single horse , equipment ...

in England,http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=39854&strquery=cressing temple Retrieved 9 October 2014 and is currently open to the public as a visitor attraction. The site has protection as an ancient monument. The Knights Templar built two barns which are preserved as

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

buildings; one of these medieval barns is claimed to be the oldest standing

timber-framed Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large woode ...

barn in the world.Bettley, James, and Nikolaus Pevsner. Essex: The Buildings of England. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007. 313.

The Knights Templar Preceptory of Cressing

The manor of Cressing was granted to the Knights Templar in 1136 by Matilda of Boulogne, the wife of King Stephen close to the main road between

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colch ...

, and the road between Witham and Braintree.Haag, Michael (2014) The Tragedy of the Templars. Published by Profile Books Limited () 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 at the new town of Wulnesforde in the parish of Witham. 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 A preceptor (from Latin, "''praecepto''") is a teacher responsible for upholding a ''precept'', meaning a certain law or tradition. Buddhist monastic orders Senior Buddhist monks can become the preceptors for newly ordained monks. In the Buddhi ...

, accompanied by two or three knights or sergeants, together with a chaplain, a bailiff, numerous household servants overseeing around 160 tenant farmers. The manor had a mansion house, bakehouse, brewery, dairy, granary, smithy, gardens, a

dovecote A dovecote or dovecot , doocot ( Scots) or columbarium is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pige ...

, a watermill, and a windmill, with a chapel and associated cemetery dedicated to

St Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...

. The proceeds from the Cressing Temple were all diverted to fund Templar activities in the

Crusader states The Crusader States, also known as Outremer, were four Catholic realms in the Middle East that lasted from 1098 to 1291. These feudal polities were created by the Latin Catholic leaders of the First Crusade through conquest and political i ...

in the Middle East. During the reign of King Edward II the Templar order was suppressed in England, with their estate at Cressing being handed over to the Order of the

Knights Hospitaller The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headq ...

in 1309, who preserved the Templar documents and charters of Cressing amongst their own records. The manor, controlled by a

prior Prior (or prioress) is an ecclesiastical title for a superior in some religious orders. The word is derived from the Latin for "earlier" or "first". Its earlier generic usage referred to any monastic superior. In abbeys, a prior would be low ...

of the Knights Hospitaller, continued to work as a large estate. It was targeted in 1381 during the

Peasants' Revolt The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Rising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Blac ...

, 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. The Hospitaller manor of Cressing Temple was dissolved in 1540, soon after the last monasteries, and on 8 July 1541,

King Henry VIII Henry VIII (28 June 149128 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disa ...

granted the manor and lordship of Cressing and the half-hundred of Witham to Sir William Huse and John Smyth, one of the barons of the Exchequer. John Smyth's family held the manor until 1657.Strachan, David (1998). Essex from the Air: Archaeology and history from aerial photographs. Published by Essex County Council Planning Dept. () Following the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

, in the late 16th Century there was a mansion on the site, now called the 'Great House', but it was demolished in the 18th Century and only the farmhouse, granary, wagon lodge and stable yards remain. The mid-Sixteenth century Tudor brick garden also stands and has been developed by Essex County Council who acquired the barns for the people of Essex in 1987. The farmhouse dates from 1618, and the coach house from 1800. Extensive archaeological investigations were carried out as part of a programme of improvements and updates in the 1990s.

Cressing Temple Barns

Cressing Temple is the site of three Grade I listed timber-framed buildings; the thirteenth-century ''Barley Barn'' and ''Wheat Barn'', described by historian Michael Haag as "the two finest Templar-built barns in Europe", and the later ''Granary'' building. The Barley Barn Roof Structure

The Barley Barn, (

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

listing 1123865), is an early thirteenth century (c. 1220) barn modified in later centuries, and is the oldest standing timber-framed barn in the world. The roof was originally tiled, and would have weighed close to 70 tonnes. The Wheat Barn (English Heritage listing 1123866) was built in around 1280 in the Romanesque style, and was altered in the early 1500s and 1700s. The Granary (English Heritage listing 1123867), built sometime just after 1575, is the largest granary in Essex. Today these are open to the public along with the later Tudor gardens and farm buildings. The barns and walled garden are a popular venue for weddings and civil ceremonies.

Tudor Gardens

walled garden A walled garden is a garden enclosed by high walls, especially when this is done for horticultural rather than security purposes, although originally all gardens may have been enclosed for protection from animal or human intruders. In temperate ...

has been reconstructed as a Tudor garden open to the public.

Notes

External links

Official website

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