The TempleChurch,London

TEMPLE CHURCH

Restoring an ancient Glory, Refurbishing its Environs:

Towards Statutory Consultations and the Search for Funds

2

The Temple Church

The Temple Church is famously one of the

most historic and beautiful buildings in London.

Its Round Church, in use by 1162, is probably

the first Gothic building built in England. It is

modelled on the round Church of the Holy

Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site of Jesus’ death,

burial and resurrection. The Temple’s Round

Church recreated the shape and so the sanctity

of the Holy Sepulchre; to be here was to be ‘in’

Jerusalem, at the centre of the world.

In 1214-15, the Temple and its Church were the

site of vital negotiations for Magna Carta. The

Charter’s hero William Marshal was buried in the

Round Church where his effigy still lies.

The Church’s Chancel, built in 1240 for the

future burial of Henry III, is a masterpiece of

Early English Gothic.

In 1608, the Crown entrusted the Church’s

ownership and care to the two Inns of Court,

the Honourable Societies of Inner and Middle

Temple [‘the Inns’].

From 1584 the expeditions to America had their

London base in the Temple; the first colonial

constitutions were drafted here. Six Members of

the Inns would be signatories to the Declaration

of Independence; seven, to the Constitution.

Even a glance round the Church makes clear

how judiciously and generously the Church is

being maintained. The Inns are now preparing

to equip this most beautiful and historic Church

to serve London and the world for the next 100

years.

3

4

The Temple from the air: the Temple Church at the top centre; Inner Temple Hall beneath it; Middle Temple Hall above the gardens to the left

The Church was last subject to major repairs in

the 1950s. It had been gutted in the Blitz, and

was elegantly and austerely restored by Walter

Godfrey. The role of the Church was narrow:

to be the private collegiate Chapel of the two

Inns and in particular of their Benchers, at a

time when the Bar – and so the Inns – were

far smaller than they are today. Godfrey left

alone and largely unused the Norman Doorway,

spectacularly carved but already degraded,

at the west end of the Round; instead he

introduced a modest entrance on the Chancel’s

south side. This side-entrance is serviceable, but

nullifies the east-west orientation and symmetry

of the Church and of Godfrey’s new pews. It

takes the visitor into the glorious Round via a

dog-leg turn and a side-aisle.

Godfrey was confined, for the ‘back-stage’

facilities, to a long corridor of space beneath

ground-level abutting the Chancel’s north wall:

here he had to fit in all the toilets and a single-

room choir-school.

Seventy years later, the roles of the Inns

and of their Church have changed out of all

recognition. The Inns now want their Church to

embody and promote their own outward-looking

service to jurists and to visitors from all over

the world. They want this jewel in the middle of

London – and, just yards from Fleet Street, in the

middle of the Temple’s restorative, therapeutic

calm – to be visited and valued by a large

number and wide cross-section of London’s

residents and workers and by anyone with a

personal, professional or potential interest in the

rule of law.

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6

Magna Carta was negotiated in the Temple; its hero

William Marshal was buried in the Round Church where

his effigy still lies.

Magna Carta has an inimitable resonance throughout

the Common Law world and beyond. A steady stream

of foreign jurists and other visitors value the time they

can spend in the Church and can devote to its ongoing

exhibition, Magna Carta and the Road to the Rule of Law.

A group of senior officers in the American Bar Association

has, with the happy endorsement of the Inns, set up The

American Friends of the Temple Church (2019). They refer

to the Church as the Birthplace of American Law, looking

back gratefully to Magna Carta and to our next pivotal

date:

1584The central figures in the Virginia expeditions – Raleigh,

Amadas and Gosnold, and the constitutional draftsmen

Coke, Popham and Sandys – were all members of Inner

or Middle Temple. Six Members of Inner or Middle Temple

would be signatories to the Declaration of Independence;

seven, to the Constitution

America’s Church in London

1840The Inns revived the Church’s medieval choir of men and

boys; it has, ever since, been one of the most famous

church-choirs in England.

The Inns have since 1840 offered generous bursaries to

the choir’s boy-choristers, eighteen gifted and talented

musical children at any one time.

The Inns are now planning to extend such musical

benefits to similarly gifted young women and girls.

The Harmonies of Heaven

18402019

The Church now works closely with the Inns themselves,

the Bar Council and Chambers to serve London, its

residents and visitors – not least the large number of

foreign jurists who come to London – with a wide range

of liturgical, musical, socio-legal and cultural events.

The Church remains first and foremost a church, for all

of London and for Common Law lawyers from all over

the world. The Inns value as well the Church’s steadily

rising profile as a hub of the city’s historical, musical and

intellectual and cultural life.

In summary, the Inns have in mind to double: (i) the

number of visitors to the Church, from 35,000 to 70,000

pa; (ii) the number of concerts held in the Church, from 12

to 24 pa; and (iii) the number of other law-based and more

generally cultural events – special services for visiting

groups, socio-legal discussions, etc – from 10 to 20 pa.

Access through the rebeautified West Doorway to the

Church’s historic interior and its events will enhance the

experience of everyone who attends and will re-affirm the

Church as one of the jewels of medieval and of modern

London.

Still the Mother-Church of the Common Law

A timeline vividly displays the depth

and range of the Church’s current

public benefit and of its enhancement

when the project is completed. All

the threads picked up here from the

Church’s long and remarkable history

are still woven into the fabric of its life.

1162 Services at the Temple Church

1162

The liturgy of the Church has continued without

interruption since 1162. An inventory of 1307 makes clear

that the Templars themselves maintained here an organ

and a well-resourced choir of men and boys.

The Inns now welcome London’s residents and visitors in

large numbers to the Church’s choral services.

The Round Church, modelled on the rotunda of the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, was in use.

It was built by the Templars, dedicated to the protection

of pilgrims to Jerusalem. To be in the Round was, to the

medieval mind, to be ‘in’ Jerusalem.

By 1240 the Church had as well its present Chancel, The

West Doorway offered a spectacular, sweeping view along

the whole Church from the West Door eastwards to the

altar. The Inns plan to make the church once more one of

the most dramatic - and engaging - spaces in London. The

plan involves a far more gracious and welcoming foyer for

visitors in the West Porch, glazed in for climatic control;

access to the Church via the rebeautified West Doorway;

a natural, comprehensive ‘circuit’ of the Church and its

exhibits; and a shop and café at the visitors’ exit. The Inns

are already preparing a business plan for the advertising

and staffing required.

London’s Jerusalem: The Holy Sepulchre.

1162 London’s Jerusalem: The Dome of the Rock

The Templars’ headquarters in Jerusalem was the Aqsa

Mosque on the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), facing

the octagonal Dome of the Rock. The Round of the

Temple Church evokes as well the Dome, believed by

the Christian Middle Ages to have been the Temple in

which the infant Jesus was presented to the Lord. The

Round, then, represents as well, inevitably in the terms

of medieval Christendom, the most famous of all Islamic

shrines.

The crusading Orders existed to deepen the divisions

between Christendom and Islam. The Temple Church

is now dedicated to help bridge those divisions. This

work began with the foundational lecture of Archbishop

Rowan Williams on sharia law in England (2007) and has

continued ever since.

1214-5 The Cradle of the Common LawTimeline

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For this plan to be optimised, the ‘envelope’

surrounding the Church’s lovely interior needs

in two ways to be transformed. The West

Doorway, with its view through the Round along

the length of the Chancel, should become the

principal, all-year entrance to the Church for

the congregations, audiences and visitors at

the Church’s whole programme of services,

concerts, events and exhibitions; and the

present (confined and dilapidated) ‘back-stage’

facilities need to be radically redesigned and

improved, with the choir-school removed to a

larger and more suitable space.

All this has been recognised for some time. Two

changes have brought the potential benefits of

such a plan into sharp focus.

First, the West Doorway itself, with its once-

lovely carvings, has seemed to be irreparably

damaged. Nobody would propose the

replacement of 12th century stone, however

Equipping the Church for the coming CenturyParts A - B: The Access and West Doorway

badly degraded it might be; the Doorway could

never, it seemed, be more than impressive

but forlorn. Our own research, into the

stonework, however, has shown that all the

well-preserved, crisply-carved stones are 12th

century; and all the badly degraded stones are

replacements, installed in a repair-campaign

of 1842. To rebeautify the Doorway now will

be to do supremely well what was (with the

best intentions) badly done – with poor stone

wrongly laid – in the 19th century. It is now

possible to envision the Doorway as once more

the fittingly spectacular, uplifting entrance to its

own 12th century rotunda and so onwards to the

Chancel.

Secondly, the Inns are looking to make available

such musical and educational and benefits

as they offer to their gifted and talented boy-

choristers to a number of similarly musical

girls and young women too. At this point the

11

present single-room ‘choir-school’ with modest

provision of boys-only lavatories ceases to be

merely inadequate and becomes a prohibitive

obstruction to the scheme. The time has come

to move the ‘choir-school’; all the facilities in the

northern corridor can then be reconceived and

radically improved. And at this point all the work

and expense on the West Doorway and its

environs is fully vindicated: by a greatly

expanded programme of concerts and other

events for an enhanced and wider-reaching

public benefit.

The choir-school can be re-sited in the three

lovely, airy gables of the chancel’s large roof-

space. There is room in the roof too for all the

Church’s administrative offices, bringing the

Church’s whole operation (vividly) under one

roof and instantly enhancing the co-ordination

between its different parts.

The Inns will explore the possibility of solar

panels on at least two of the three south-facing

gables. No costings for this are included here.

The ground-level outside the Church rises (on its

ascent from the River to Fleet Street) by 7 feet

from the floor of the West Porch to the northern

edge of the Church’s curtilage. A combined

ramp and steps down to the Porch will echo and

accentuate the curve of the Round’s exterior

northern wall of 12th century ragstone.

The ramp and steps will land in the lower

courtyard to the north-west of the Round. A

shop and café will be added to the north (under

the arches) and east (extending the present

vestries).

The Porch will be glazed in to retain a steady

temperature and humidity, and so to make the

West Doorway the principal entrance to the

Church all year round. The Porch will be foyer

and welcome-area.

A door will be inserted in the north wall (p. 8

above), directly opposite the present south

door, as an exit into the new shop and small

café extending the present vestries to the

west.

Part A: The Approach and West Porch

12

Part B: The Great Norman Doorway, 1162, ‘The Gate of Heaven’

13

Stonework of the 12th c. in green, 19th c in pink; the worst decay to the foliate orders ringed in red.

In 1608 the Temple was granted by King James I

to the Honourable Societies of Inner and Middle

Temple. One condition of their occupancy was

the maintenance of the Temple Church. The two

Inns have gladly met that condition ever since.

Her Majesty The Queen revisited the Church

in 2008 to renew the Inns’ Letters Patent, and

in 2013 for the rededication of the Church’s

organ after its – triumphantly successful –

repristination.

We are now turning our attention to the great

Norman Doorway of the Round Church, a

masterpiece of 12th century carving. It was

created and carved c. 1162. In the 1840s a fair

amount of the original stone was replaced, but

in low-quality stone badly laid. Some parts of

the Doorway’s carving are still crisp and fine;

others are degraded beyond recognition. It

turns out that the well-preserved sections are

12th century; the degraded sections, 19th. We

will not be replacing the ancient stone, but will

undertake afresh, properly and well and to last

for centuries, the 19th century repairs.

The effect will transform the Doorway: it will

be again as beautiful as it was in the Templars’

day. Around it we will reconfigure the porch and

steps, to make the Doorway the entrance once

more, as it was and should be, in permanent

use.

The Church currently enjoys some 35,000

visitors each year, and the congregations of

some 130 choral services. The Norman Doorway

and its entrance to the Church will become

again one of the sights of London, leading

visitors in to the Mother Church and cradle of

the Common Law.

The effect will transform the Doorway: it will be

again as beautiful as it was in the Templars’ day.

14

Marked in green: 12th century stone. Marked in blue: new stone. Marked in purple:

Jesomite / plaster-based casts. Ringed in red: the (only) ten 12th century stones that

would be affected by stone renewal.

15

Correlation of the 19th century stone (in pink) with the areas of foliate carving that have

suffered the worst decay (ringed in red). The same close correlation can be seen in the

innermost carvings (Order 1) and in the capitals.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7Orders 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Section of the outermost

order (7), north side. The

lower, badly degraded foliate

stonework is 19th century.

12th century foliate carving

from the outermost order

removed in 1842 and now in

the Victoria & Albert museum.

16

12th century voussoir from the innermost order (1), removed

in 1842 and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

12th century voussoir from the innermost order (1), removed

in 1842 and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Section of the innermost order (1). The figured/foliate

stonework is 19th century.

17

12th Century abacus from the band above the Doorway’s capitals and demi-figures,

removed in 1842 and now in the Victoria & Albert Museum

18

Parts C - E: Internal Re-orderingHere, Part E: Roof Space - Choir School

19

The central gable of the roof will provide a

soaring, inspiring place for the training of the

choir’s gifted and talented musical boys and,

in the future, young women and girls. There is

space for an integrated suite of the Church’s

offices, uniting all the Church’s work efficiently

The Diagrams on pp 13-15 & 19 above are from Temple Church West Doorway Conservation

Strategy (RIBA Stage 2) (Purcell, 2018). The Temple Church has in recent years been the

subject of sustained study: in The Temple Church, London: History, Architecture, Art, eds R.

Griffith-Jones and D. Park (Boydell, 2010); and in Tomb & Temple: Re-imagining the Sacred

Buildings of Jerusalem, eds R. Griffith-Jones and E. Fernie (Boydell, 2018).

(and literally) under one roof. A lift will give

access, in an external tower built on the north

side of the present organ-chamber (see p. 8

above: E). A short flight of stairs down from the

roof-space will unite it with the circular gallery in

the triforium of the Round Church.

20

Contact

The Reverend and Valiant Master of the Temple

Robin Griffith-Jones: 020 7353 8559

master@templechurch.com