JANUARY 2026

During the Middle Ages, the village of Sharnbrook formed part of the English landholdings of the great Crusading orders: first the Knights Templar, and later the Knights Hospitaller (Order of St John of Jerusalem).

Templar Origins

By the 12th and 13th centuries, the Knights Templar held land at Sharnbrook, including a manor known as “Temple”, a name that survives in later records and reflects their ownership. Like elsewhere in England, this land was not used as a military base but as an income-producing estate, supporting the Templars’ activities in the Holy Land.

Transfer to the Hospitallers

After the suppression of the Knights Templar in 1312, their English lands passed to the Knights Hospitaller. Sharnbrook then became part of the wider Hospitaller estate administered from the Preceptory at Melchbourne, the order’s main centre in north Bedfordshire.

Property and Land at Sharnbrook

Medieval records describe the Hospitallers’ holdings at Sharnbrook as including:

• One manor
• One carucate of arable land (roughly the amount one plough team could cultivate)
• Twelve acres of meadow
• Ten tenant households

The manor was leased out, rather than directly farmed by the order. A surviving record shows it was granted on a life lease by a Hospitaller official, Brother Thomas Larclier, to Sir John de Wolaston and his wife.

Income and the Crusades

The Sharnbrook manor produced an annual rent of 13 shillings and 4 pence (one mark), and its total value was assessed at £3 per year. While modest, this income formed part of a national and international network of estates, whose combined revenues helped fund:

• hospitals and charitable work for pilgrims
• the defence of Christian territories overseas
• and the wider military and religious mission of the Hospitallers during the Crusades

Traces Today

Today, very little of the manor survives on the ground. However, the landscape preserves subtle hints of its former presence:

• Temple Wood and Temple Spinney mark areas that would have been part of the estate.
• LiDAR surveys reveal the outline of a former toft (medieval dwelling plot) within these woods.
• Historic maps show a “Temple Barn” in the same area, further evidence of the estate’s past.

These surviving features allow us to visualise the extent of the medieval manor and connect the modern landscape with Sharnbrook’s Crusader-era history.

End of the Hospitaller Estate

The Hospitallers retained Sharnbrook’s former Templar lands until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, when their English properties were confiscated by the Crown and passed into private ownership.

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