The Templars of Neusum

Alongside an access roundabout to a motorway services is a piece of ground that, getting on for a millennium ago, was an early commercial sheep farm run by warrior monks.

This art project is unusual for this practitioner.

  • It involves research, presentation, challenging others to engage and collaborate and the creation of personal pieces.
  • This project has already developed a prototype creative trail
  • There’s an intention to build a virtual museum
Where it started – my response to the brief set for a stitch group I’m a member of – to help with outreach from the Jacobean Temple Newsam House.

Summary

In or around 1151 the Knight’s Templar set up a preceptory (or farmstead) close to the River Aire alongside the hamlet of Neusum (Newsam).

By 1307 when Edward II closed down the order there were over 1000 sheep and other animals on the farm and the manor had expanded to include all the villages which made up the estate for the next 600 years. We only know the name of one person in this 150 year occupation – Godfrey (or maybe Geoffrey); the preceptor (or commander) when it was decommissioned.

Despite having a massive barn (almost 50m long – 3/4 the length of the nave at nearby Kirkstall Abbey) the preceptory itself fell out of use a short while after and the land wasn’t effectively farmed for another 150 years.

Then, in the latter half of the 20th century the entire landscape was turned over by open-cast mining – removing all direct evidence of occupation.

Key project features:

Research (page/s coming soon)

The Creative Trail

The Alwin universe – my personal work imagining the inhabitants of the Neusum preceptory; with queer leanings.