AUGUST 2025

The Knights Hospitallers established a significant preceptory at Dalby in Leicestershire, holding lands that covered around 1,440 acres. These estates are believed to have been donated to the Order by Robert le Bossu (Robert de Beaumont), 2nd Earl of Leicester. A commandery was established there by 1206.

By 1338, the preceptory at Heather (around 25 miles from Dalby) was brought under Dalby’s authority. Heather became a lesser camera, and the two sites were thereafter known together as “Dalby and Heather,” with Dalby remaining the senior commandery.

The estates were valuable and well-developed. The Heather site is recorded as having watermills, while Dalby itself had two windmills and two dovecotes, the latter bringing in around 7 shillings annually. The Bailey of Beaumont Leys was also attached to Dalby (and Heather), generating a substantial income from rents, arable land, orchards, and fishponds. In 1338, the Beaumont Leys property alone brought in £24 13s 4d in rent, with overall profits amounting to nearly £85 per year – roughly equivalent to £700,000 today. Sheep farming appears to have been a major source of revenue, with records noting a shepherd employed at Beaumont Leys and a herd of seven cows.

Dalby’s commandery also held the advowson of the parish church – the site of the present Church of St John the Baptist – which provided an additional income of around 100 shillings per year. In 1338, the vicar was Lord John de Baruwe, who received a stipend of 6s 8d (worth several thousand pounds in today’s money).

Records from 1338 list two Hospitallers in residence at Dalby: Brother Johannes Larcher, knight and preceptor (possibly the son of John Larcher, preceptor of Friar Mayne), and Brother Peter of Hegh, perhaps serving as his squire.

Other known preceptors of Dalby include:

• Brother Robert Cort (before Johannes Larcher)
• John Dingley (1363, 1371)
• John Langstrothyr (1448)
• Thomas Newport (recorded 1503, died 1522)
• Henry Babbington (1525)
• John Babbington (died 1534)
• Henry Poole (1535/6–1540)

The commandery remained active until the suppression of the Order in England in the mid-16th century.

Today, little physical evidence of the Hospitallers’ presence survives at Dalby. Only faint earthworks remain on the raised ground beyond the present-day Church of St John the Baptist, where sheep and horses now graze. Within the church itself lies a possible Hospitaller grave slab – a silent reminder of the site’s medieval past.

 

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