City Find is Knights Templars' Oldest London Church
By Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent
August 27, 2002

REMAINS of London’s first Temple Church have recently been uncovered, several hundred yards north of its famous successor. Part of the distinctive circular nave which marked churches built by the Knights Templar in the Middle Ages was identified just south of High Holborn, on the edge of the medieval city of London.

The present Temple Church, which gives its name to the Middle Temple and Inner Temple, two of the four Inns of Court, was built from 1160 onwards. Its circular nave, reflecting the plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, was consecrated by Patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem in 1185 as the central church of the Templar Order in England; seriously damaged by bombing in the Second World War, it has been completely restored.

The earlier church and the “Old Temple”, the initial headquarters of the Order, stood just east of Chancery Lane, where Southampton Buildings recently underwent refurbishment. Archaeologists from the Museum of London watched over the site when a new lift- shaft was installed.

At the base of the excavation they found Roman deposits, cut into by what Alison Telfer describes in London Archaeologist as “a substantial medieval chalk foundation, consistent with the location and design of the circular ‘Old Temple’ of the Knights Templar, dating to the 12th century”. The foundations rested on the natural gravel of the Thames terrace that underlies the City, and match other sections seen in 1704, and in 1876, when a bank was built in Holborn just north of the present site.

Reconstruction of the plan from the foundations suggests that the circular nave had an internal diameter of about 55ft — slightly smaller than the present Temple Church. The roof would have been supported by a central colonnade of six columns, recorded in the 1876 work, as in the present building, and Telfer suggests that there was both a western porch for entry and an eastern chancel as long again as the nave. The square chancel of the Temple Church was added in 1220-40.

The Old Temple was sold to the Bishop of Lincoln when its successor was built closer to the Thames and with direct river access, and he used it as his London residence. It was eventually demolished in 1595.

Apart from the recent discovery, further remains could survive in the surrounding area, Telfer suggests: the bedrock is sufficiently deeply buried for them probably to have avoided destruction by Victorian cellarage.

Source: www.timesonline.co.uk