The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art

by Robin Griffith-Jones (Editor)

Founded as the main church of the Knights Templar in England, at their New Temple in London, the Temple Church is historically and architecturally one of the most important medieval buildings in England. Its round nave, modelled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, is extraordinarily ambitious, combining lavish Romanesque sculpture with some of the earliest Gothic architectural features in any English building of its period. It holds one of the most famous series of medieval effigies in the country. The luminous thirteenth-century choir, intended for the burial of Henry III, is of exceptional beauty. Major developments in the post-medieval period include the reordering of the church in the 1680s by Sir Christopher Wren, and a substantial restoration programme in the early 1840s.
Despite its extraordinary importance, however, it has until now attracted little scholarly or critical attention, a gap which is remedied by this volume. It considers the New Temple as a whole in the middle ages, and all aspects of the church itself from its foundation in the twelfth century to its war-time damage in the twentieth. Richly illustrated with numerous black and white and colour plates, it makes full use of the exceptional range and quality of the antiquarian material available for study, including drawings, photographs, and plaster casts.

Robin Griffith-Jones, Virginia Jansen, Philip Lankester, Helen Nicholson, David Park, Rosemary Sweet, William Whyte, Christopher Wilson.

Table of Contents

Editors' Preface
At the Heart of Medieval The New Temple in the Middle Ages - Helen J. Nicholson
Gothic Architecture The Nave of the London Temple Church - Christopher Wilson
Light and The Templars' New Choir - Virginia Jansen
Medieval Burials and Monuments - David Park
The Thirteenth-Century Military Effigies in the Temple Church - Philip J Lankester
'An Enrichment of Cherubims': Christopher Wren's Refurbishment of the Temple Church - Robin Griffith-Jones
'A neat structure with pillars': Changing Perceptions of the Temple Church in the Long Eighteenth Century - Rosemary H Sweet
Restoration and The Temple Church in the Nineteenth Century - William Whyte
'The latter Glory of this House': Some Details of Damage and Repair, 1840-1941 - Robin Griffith-Jones
Illustrations

314 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2010