John Dunn

Lincolnshire Knights Templar, from a medieval military order with a global reach

Thursday, 18 January 2024 at 21:37

Digital reconstruction. Source: Lincolnshire Heritage website


Please find below the text commentary in support of a video that I recorded last Summer.

I plan to publish the video to YouTube in the next week or two, where it will be seen on my YouTube Channel.

Lincolnshire Knights Templar, from a medieval military order with a global reach

I’m just leaving the A15 Sleaford to Lincoln road to follow a lane to a place with connections to the medieval Crusades in the Holy Land.

What’s that got to do with a quiet lane in Lincolnshire you might be asking? Stay with me.

Thanks for joining me on the ride today, it’s good to have your company.

(Show captions “A like, subscribe and share would be most welcome”)

(Show map)

South of Lincoln, I’m in an area of open agricultural land with extensive views, lost villages, and isolated churches.

This is a strange lane. It appears to have been deliberately planted with an avenue of trees, relatively recently, the trees are not large.

My lane veers off left here, but Warren Lane, now a bridleway, carries straight on to a small isolated church, the church of St John, at a place where five lanes meet.

Still I follow the tree lined lane.

There’s the farm I’m looking for, up ahead, on the right.

Here it is… or is it? Looks like I’ve turned too soon. There’s definitely a bridleway through the farm here, but that’s not what I’m looking for. There looks to have been much recent housing development here too that’snot on my map.

I’ll shuffle back and look again.

Here it is, the track past Temple Farm.

Did you see that tower on the right?

It’ll come into view again soon.

There it is. That’s what I’ve come to see, the great tower of the Preceptory of the crusader knights, known as the Knights Templar.

Let’s take a walk.

The Templars were military monks who established a Europe-wide network of preceptories, which were religious houses from which they administered their estates and raised funds to support their crusader work in the Holy Land.

Wow, this is an impressive piece of medieval architecture, standing here, all alone, in this farmyard.

The tower is the one to the fore in this mock-up from the Heritage Lincolnshire website. (add Link)

This surviving 13th century tower once formed part of a great Templar church, the most important outside London.

It was attached to a circular church that replicated circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Parts of the circular nave were still standing in 1726 as shown here. There is no visible trace of it now.

The size of this truncated tower gives you some idea of the scale of the former intact church in its heyday,

It’s one of the few Templar sites still to have standing remains. A rare survivor.

This ground floor probably served as a side chapel or chapter house.

That’s a grave cover of a knight excavated from the farmyard.

On the floor lies the excavated section of a stone pillar that once stood elsewhere, most probably in the lost circular nave.

That decorated stonework is the base to an altar that stood against the wall where now rubble is exposed.

To the right of the altar, just as in most medieval churches, is the stone basin used for washing holy vessels used during the Mass.

Those small arches known as blind arcading once had columns running down to the ground, between which were seats for the priestly knights. You can make out the column bases next to the grave cover.

There’s the blind arcading, with an entrance to the spiral staircase on the right.

Who knows what this room was used for. You guess is as good as any one's.

That’s the remnant of a further spiral staircase that once went up to a floor above.

The roof dates from the early 20th century, when the tower was saved from further decay and made watertight.

Before then it was open to the elements.

There’s graffiti everywhere. Some recent, others much older.

Temple Bruer has been a visitor attraction for hundreds of years.

There’s Thomas Lancester, who made his mark in 1827.

C. Robertson, Navenby, joiner; and is that 1817 underneath his name?

Annie Glasier, 1872.

The initials I R from 1782

And is that date 1688?

Also,three RAF Pilots who left their initials here with a date of 1919. The RAF had only just been formed as an independent service a year earlier. These initials must have been those of personnel from the nearby RAF Cranwell Training College.

It is highly likely too that Lawrence of Arabia would have visited Temple Bruer. Under the pseudonym T. E. Shaw, he worked at RAF Cranwell from August 1925 to December 1926. As an archaeologist and author of a book about crusader castles, he would surely have ridden his Brough Superior to this historic Lincolnshire home to the crusading order of Knights Templar. However, he famously came to Cranwell seeking anonymity, so I suppose he wouldn’t draw attention to himself with graffiti.

(On screen) See an earlier video I made about Lawrence in Lincolnshire, entitled, rather long-windedly, T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, aka T. E. Shaw races a Bristol Fighter on his Brough Superior. Link below.

So there you have it, the Temple Bruer Tower.

Such a history is here; connections with the tumultuous events in the Holy Land of the Middle Ages.

As I leave this hidden corner of Lincolnshire, it’s hard not to think that the ruined then lost preceptory of the Knights Templar ended up as building material for the farm and farm buildings, barns and the like, and so remains all around here in re-purposed forms.

By the end of the 13th century the popularity of the Knights Templar was waning and they were beginning to be viewed with suspicion. They were accused of misconduct and corruption and their arrest was ordered. In 1308 William de la More, the Preceptor of Temple Bruer and the Grand Prior of all England, was arrested at Temple Bruer along with his knights and imprisoned at Lincoln.

The Order was suppressed in 1312 and their property passed to the Knights Hospitaller, until the suppression of the monasteries in about 1540.

But in their heyday, the Knights Templar, from a medieval military order with a global reach, would have ridden out from here to inspect their farm holdings in the countryside for miles around, and here, on this Lincolnshire lane, I’m following in their tracks.

When you think about it all, well, it’s just amazing isn’t it?

Thanks for riding with me today, if you’ve enjoyed the trip, please Like, subscribe, perhaps even share, and I’ll then let you know when I’m next out and about.

For now, I’m done.

© John Dunn.

Logos dipping down

Wednesday, 17 January 2024 at 21:31

Logos dipping down

My thinking arises unconditionally, from outside the phenomena of the world; as such it closely resembles Love; it takes me by surprise, it comes from ‘nowhere’. Thinking must surely in some way be related to encounter, not so much between another and me, but rather between thinking spirit and me.

My thinking is the power of love in spiritual form. Following encounters with lovers, there arose the feeling that there could always be something more, something even more lasting and more fulfilling. This ‘more’ is the yearning for the absolute relation, the power of love in spiritual form. That my thinking is the power of Love in spiritual form, is another way of saying my thinking is ‘the power of God in spiritual form’.

Encounter awoke me to Love, and the recognition that living thinking is the Logos dipping down in to the phenomena of the world, the dipping down that occurs with a power that flows through the creative act of my thinking, which is an act of Love; and it is perpetual.

© John Dunn.

Only like is known by like

Sunday, 14 January 2024 at 20:46

Only like is known by like

Casting idolatry aside is the Beginning. Moving beyond idolatry is the perpetual Beginning. As an idolater I lived in the realm of presupposition, making an idol of the already there. The ‘already there’ was the realm of Ananke before the Beginning, the indefinite cycle, the equilibrium before violation, the pre-determined non-being before the awakening of ‘be’ing. As an idolater where could I find God if not presupposed as existing before me as an idol?

Not to participate in God is not to apprehend God. Only like is known by like. I leaped clear of all that is ready-made and presupposed to make myself grow to like expanse with that greatness of the Creator which is beyond all measures; for it is the height of evil not to know God. I will not seek an idol in outer space. My heart is the only place in which to meet God face to face. Only encounter will suffice.

© John Dunn.

Independence from God means independence from a presupposed idol

Sunday, 14 January 2024 at 20:32

Independence from God means independence from a presupposed idol

To know God with­out image, without naturalistic attributes, and without semblance, is therefore to know my self. I will be the centre of dominion and power, which is synonymous with creative power. To be at the centre of creation means that I must put myself in the place of God;not to replace God, but rather to find the true God. My rightful role is to model the world after my thinking; and consciously being the master of my thinking I must be the master of what my thinking produces.

As the absolute individual I am the exemplar of absolute freedom and power. The only one way I can prove God is to make myself God. My absolute freedom is the principle sign of being God. My body as the absolute individual is the universe. In being independent from God I will be deified myself, internalising the qualities of God such as omniscience, omnipotence, and immortality. Understand this: my independence from God means my independence from a presupposed idol, it means to be free of idolatry. God does not exist. My Ego must create him by making itself divine.

© John Dunn.

He I is

Sunday, 14 January 2024 at 20:23

He I is

I find that I am not concerned with the question of whether God (as a True Being) exists or not; rather my concern is how (in what manner or mode) He exists. There are metaphors, there have always been personalisations and anthropomorphisms, but these always slide into presuppositions and sink into idolatry. How can God be known? Answer: with­out image, without naturalistic attributes, and without semblance, neither visible or imagined.

But if I am to know God without theses things, then there must be nothing between me and Him. I must really become He and He me. God must really become me and I must really become God. In the dialectic of incarnation and spiritualisation this 'He' and 'I' become ‘Is’, and it is in this ‘self-identity’, this perpetual Beginning, this 'He' and ‘I' - that ‘Is’, that the Logos will be found.

© John Dunn.

Eros addresses the fallen

Saturday, 13 January 2024 at 22:33

The doors of perception must be opened

Eros addresses the fallen

Your Fall is from different degrees of consciousness, to physical thought, to an inner activity in which the Logos no longer acts. You are concerned with processing a seemingly ready-made world reflected back upon your senses. No matter how much you grasp the whole outside world, you cannot grasp the depth of inner reality. The superficiality of your intellectual level does not allow you to find the Logos, but you find instead idols which give you the answers, give you the possibility to organise the world, knowledge, the economy, the future, everything that can be understood and organised through fallen thought. you worship idols.

The level of fallen thought, however, is the only one in which you might encounter the Logos. At that level you encounter the presence of the Logos and the presence of idols on the same level. Of course this is not because the Logos and the idols are on the same level, but they are for you who thinks with fallen thought. On the level of fallen or reflected thought you find more easily a force that gives you everything pre-organised: knowledge, physical, mathematical, philosophical knowledge, ethics, logic, administrative capacity, and also politics, the judiciary, medicine, even art, religion, and metaphysics.

You are in a position to know this dazzling power, but you also have the ability to perform an act of freedom and reject the easy path of presuppositions and idols, to find the more difficult one of the Logos. But you are condemned to never finding the Logos without first being thrown into the reflected ‘reality’ of the world. That ‘reality’ is Ananke’s realm. Your doors of perception must be opened. There must be encounter. Eros must enter.

© John Dunn.

Cosmic Christ

Friday, 12 January 2024 at 21:03

Cosmic Christ

‘The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory' (John 1:14) is an English translation that conceives only an image of the incarnation and ministry of Jesus in the past. Remove the past tense, however, and insert Mind for Word, and the text emphasises that Mind becomes flesh that dwells amongst us now.

The Mind becomes flesh and dwells among us, and we behold his glory.

The time-limited and historically provincial Jesus is thus restored to his true glory as the Cosmic Christ. The world that we behold is his glory, not the reflection back of some ready-made and pre-supposed, externalised idol.

The Word, in the context of John 1:1, is universally understood to mean the Logos. Given the better translation of Word, then the living thinking of Mind is the Logos, and the Logos is God and God is Love, the Cosmic Christ. Following my argument, we might then consider the Logos, the living God, as the living thinking of Mind, dwelling in rather than amongst us.


This notion of in, rather than amongst, was after all favoured by John:


He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)

© John Dunn.