Patrick Comerford
The Temple Church, like Saint Dunstan-in-the-West, is one of the churches in the Fleet Street area that I failed to visit until last week, despite my many working visits as a journalist to Fleet Street over the decades.
Many people only know of the Temple Church because of its appearance in both The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and the film based on the book. Having visited the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris earlier this month, which also features in The Da Vinci Code, how could I not visit the Temple Church in London when I had the opportunity last month?
But there were other reasons for wanting to visit the Temple Church too. There is a local tradition – but without any historical foundation – that Saint Mary’s Church in Askeaton, Co Limerick, where I was the priest-in-charge for five years (2017-2022), was a Templar foundation.
In addition, I have visited and written about many of the Royal Peculiars in London, including Westminster Abbey, the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine, Limehouse, the Queen’s Chapel at Saint James’s Palace, and the royal chapels at the Tower of London. But I had yet to visit the Temple Church, despite having passed it on many occasions.
The Temple Church is also known as ‘the mother-church of the Common Law’. It played a central role in the gestation of Magna Carta, and in the spread of the Charter’s principles to America and throughout the world. William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, son-in-law of Strongbow and Aoife Mac Murrough, and hero of Runnymede, is buried in the church, as is his son the 2nd earl, one of Magna Carta’s surety barons.
The Temple Church is jointly owned by the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple Inns of Court, two of the Inns of Court that hold the exclusive right to call barristers to practise law at the Bar of England and Wales. Temple Bar was a gateway that once stood in the middle of Fleet Street. The area around the Temple Church is still known as the Temple, and the nearby Underground station is called Temple.
More recently, the Temple Church has had an important role in Christian-Muslim dialogue, hosting the public discussions on Islam and English Law that began in 2008 with Archbishop Rowan William’s famous lecture on sharia law in the UK.
The Temple Church is one of the beautiful and historically significant great churches in London. Its round church is modelled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and it is one of only four mediaeval round churches still in use in England: the Temple Church, London; the Round Church or Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton; and Saint John the Baptist, Little Maplestead, Essex.
Before the church was built, the Knights Templar in London had met at a site in High Holborn that had been the location of a Roman temple in Londinium. After the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, the Knights Templar set up their headquarters in the Al-Aqsa Mosque adjacent to the Dome of the Rock or Templum Domini, the site of the Temple of Solomon. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem became the model for the round churches built by the Templars, including the Round Church in London.
The order expanded rapidly in England, and by the 1160s their site in London had become too confined. They bought the site of the Temple Church to establish a larger monastic complex as their headquarters in England. The Temple Church was consecrated by Heraclius, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, on 10 February 1185. It is believed that King Henry II (1154-1189) was present at the consecration.
The church has two separate sections: the original circular church, which is 17 metres (55 ft) in diameter, and a later rectangular section at the east side, built about half a century later. The new complex included the church, residences, military training facilities and recreational grounds for the brothers and novices, who were not permitted to go into the City without the permission of the Master of the Temple.
The Knights Templar were powerful in England, and the Master of the Temple sat in Parliament as primus baro (the first baron of the realm). The Temple complex was regularly used as a residence by kings and by legates of the Pope.
The Temple also served as an early bank, sometimes in defiance of Crown attempts to seize the funds of nobles who had entrusted their wealth there. During the reign of King John (1199-1216), the church was also a royal treasury, with the Knights Templar in the role of international bankers.
King Henry III (1216-1272) wanted to be buried in the church. To accommodate his wishes, the original chancel was pulled down in the early 13th century and a new larger chancel was built. It was consecrated on Ascension Day 1240 and has a central aisle and two side aisles. The height of the vault is 11.05 metres (36 ft 3 in). However, Henry III changed his mind, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
The wealth and independence of the Templars created jealousy and envy throughout Europe, and eventually was their downfall. After the Knights Templar were suppressed in 1307-1314, Edward II took control of the Temple Church as a crown possession.
The church and the compound were later given to the Knights Hospitaller, who leased the Temple to two colleges of lawyers. One college moved into the part of the Temple previously used by the knights, and the other into the part previously used by its clergy, and both shared the use of the church. The colleges evolved into the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple, two of the four Inns of Court in London.
Shakespeare sets the church and garden as the location in Henry VI, part 1 for the fictional scene of the plucking of two roses of York and Lancaster and the start of the Wars of the Roses.
The church became the property of the Crown once again in 1540, when Henry VIII abolished the Knights Hospitaller in England and confiscated their property. Henry VIII provided a priest for the church under the former title Master of the Temple.
Judge Gerald Comerford entered the Inner Temple in London in 1578 to study law. He was later MP for Callan, the Queen’s Attorney for Connacht, Chief Justice of Munster and a Baron of the Court of Exchequer. His contemporary, Philip Comberford (or Comerford) from Waterford, matriculated at Oxford in 1581, and later studied law at the Inner Temple (1586) and Clifford’s Inn.
The church was the venue of the Battle of the Pulpits in the 1580s, a theological conflict between the Puritans and supporters of the Elizabethan Compromise. Richard Hooker, one of the definitive Anglican theologians and the author of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, was Master of the Temple in 1585-1591; his theological opponent, Walter Travers, was the Reader (lecturer) at the Temple.
King James I granted use of the church in perpetuity to the two Inns in 1608 on condition that they supported and maintained it. Some decades later, Humphrey Comberford of the Moat House, Tamworth, was admitted as fellow commoner to the Inner Temple in 1632 and to Clare College, Cambridge.
The Temple Church escaped damage in the Great Fire of London of 1666. Nevertheless, it was refurbished by Sir Christopher Wren, who made extensive modifications to the interior, including the addition of an altar screen and the installation of an organ.
Many prominent people were buried in the church, including the Irish-born poet, novelist and playwright Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), who lived in Wine Office Court, off Fleet Street, who wrote part of ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ in his lodgings at No 6. His statue stands in front of Trinity College Dublin, facing College Green.
The church underwent a Victorian restoration in 1841 by Smirke and Burton, who decorated the walls and ceiling in high Victorian Gothic style. Further restoration work was carried out by James Piers St Aubyn in 1862.
During World War II, German incendiary bombs set the roof of the Round Church on fire on 10 May 1941. The fire quickly spread to the nave and chapel. The organ and all the wooden parts of the church, including the Victorian renovations, were destroyed and the Purbeck marble columns in the chancel cracked in the intense heat. The Master’s House was burned down on the same night.
The church was designated a Grade I listed building in 1950, and the renovated church was rededicated in November 1958.
The church is the venue for regular choral music performances and organ recitals, and the choir is in the English cathedral tradition. The Temple Choir under George Thalben-Ball became famous for its recording in 1927 of Mendelssohn’s ‘Hear My Prayer’, including the solo ‘O for the Wings of a Dove’ by Ernest Lough. It became one of the most popular recordings of all time by a church choir.
Many musicians value the acoustics in the church. Sir John Barbirolli recorded a performance there of the ‘Fantasia on a Theme’ by Thomas Tallis by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1962, and Paul Tortelier recorded the complete Bach Cello Suites there in 1982.
The church was the venue of the world premiere of Sir John Tavener’s ‘The Veil of the Temple’, performed by the choir over seven hours during an overnight vigil in in 2003. The boys’ choir appears on the 2016 recording of John Rutter’s violin concerto ‘Visions’.
The church has had a number of famous organists and has two organs: a chamber organ built by Robin Jennings in 2001, and a four manual Harrison & Harrison organ, built in 1924 and installed at the Temple Church in 1954.
The Temple Church has a significant role in The Da Vinci Code, the novel by Dan Brown and its film adaptation, and key scene was filmed inside the church.
The Temple Church serves both the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple as a private chapel. It is a royal peculiar, leaving it outside the Diocese of London and the diocesan structures of the Church of England, although the Bishop of London is also ex officio Dean of the Chapel Royal.
The Temple Church has two priests: the Master of the Temple, or ‘the Reverend and Valiant Master of the Temple’, whose official residence is the Master’s House, a Georgian townhouse built in 1764; and the Reader of the Temple.
The title of the Master of the Temple recalls the head of the former order of the Knights Templar. The Master is appointed by the Crown, a right of appointment that was reserved when the church was granted to the two inns by James I in 1608. The present Master of the Temple is the Revd Robin Griffith-Jones, who was appointed in 1999; the present Reader of the Temple is the Revd Mark Hatcher.
• The regular Sunday services in the Temple Church are: 8:30 am, Holy Communion (BCP said), 11:15 am Choral Mattins (1st and 3rd Sundays), Choral Eucharist (2nd, 4th and 5th Sundays). Weekday services include: Choral Evensong, Wednesdays, 6 pm; Holy Communion (BCP said), 1:15 pm, Thursdays.
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