Knights Templar in Norfolk and Suffolk: banking at Dunwich

I’ve added some comments on the Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk to my ‘Knights Templar estates’ blog here. My transcription of the accounts for the��first and second years that the Templar’s estates in Norfolk and Suffolk were administered by royal officials are on Wattpad here, with the inventory of these estates that was made in November 1311. The accounts for 1308-9 are also attached to this post: The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA 358_18��and you can see the inventory here: The Templars in Norfolk and Suffolk TNA E 142_112.

I’ve described some of the interesting goings-on at��Gislingham in Suffolk in��earlier posts.��The Templars also had an impressive chapel at Dunwich, to judge from the accounts — which mention valuable plate, collections of holy relics, and some valuable items including over ��100 deposited with the Templars for safekeeping��by Robert de Seffeld, parson of Brampton. The king’s official who had taken charge at Dunwich returned the money to its owner. It’s good to read that the parson didn’t lose his money when the government closed his bank, but where did he deposit his valuables when the Templars could no longe3r look after them?

(Dunwich, of course, is now a ‘lost town': read about it here. The Templars’ house here was probably the basis of Burnstow in M. R. James’s ghost story ‘Oh whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad.’)