The military religious orders in the towns of the British Isles

The majority of the houses of the military religious orders in the British Isles were in the countryside, but the brothers also held some property in towns and in suburbs. Most famous of these were the Hospitallers’ houses at Clerkenwell in the suburbs of London, and Kilmainham in the suburbs of Dublin. The Templars, meanwhile, had their London house just outside the city wall on the north bank of the River Thames. Lesser military orders also held property in the city and its suburbs. But the orders also held property in other towns: the Templars had a house in the northern city of York, while the Hospitallers had a hospital in Hereford, in the Welsh March. In addition, the orders had tenants in many towns around in Britain and Ireland. When the Hospitallers inherited the Templars’ properties in the second and third decades of the fourteenth century, they also inherited the Templars’ responsibilities and duties to local society, which sometimes involved them in considerable expense; but they could also bring their considerable influence in an attempt to improve the urban environment. This paper considers what role these urban houses played in their local communities as well as what they contributed to the Orders as a whole.