The Templars at Gislingham revisited
When the Templars’ properties in Suffolk were taken under the king’s control on 10th and 11th January 1308, they became the responsibility of Thomas of St Omer, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk. Thomas’s administration of the estates in the first year after the Templar’s arrest suggests that they had been busy places, even though no Templars were arrested there in January 1308 and so presumably no Templars had been living there.
At Gislingham in Suffolk, for example, in the second year of the accounts (1309: see TNA E 358/20 rot. 24d), Thomas recorded that money had been spent on pruning the vines — so had the Templars been making wine? There was no wine made under Thomas’s administration, but he was running a minimal establishment. The wages bill covered one servant, a ploughman and a shepherd, and a maid. It isn’t clear what the servant’s job was, but as he was the best paid of the group presumably he had more responsibility than the others. The ploughmen and the shepherd’s work was obvious from their job titles. In a later account (TNA E 358/18 rot. 38, for 1311–12), we learn that the maid made the potage for the farm workers. There was also a harrower employed for part of the year. Unlike the former Templar employees in Herefordshire, the Suffolk workers were all paid in grain, rather than cash: a nourishing (if not appetising) mixture of wheat, barley, peas and grindings from the mill.
As well as growing wheat, barley, oats and peas, in 1308 the farm at Gislingham kept two or three draught animals for ploughing, four oxen, a bull and a cow, a heifer and a calf, seventy sheep (a small flock by early 14th-century monastic standards) and one ewe, who had one lamb. There were also half-a-dozen geese, four ducks, eight hens and a cockerel. There was a beehive, and vegetables were grown in the garden, including garlic and onions. During the course of Thomas’s administration, the ducks vanished and the hens were sold; a later administrator bought some more hens, but there were no more ducks. Did a fox eat the ducks? Were they stolen? Did the workforce eat them? Or did they run away?
The buildings are mentioned only in passing: a windmill, the chapel with two bells, the hall with one, chairs and benches in the chapel and tables and benches in the hall. There were several vats and casks but no mention of what was in them — so perhaps they had been used for winemaking but were now empty. As discussed in an earlier post, there was also a tumbledown building which had been a place for distributing alms to the poor. The King’s administrator didn’t bother with repairing this: he had enough to do repairing the barn roof and the mill.
A particular point of interest is that the estate at Gislingham was paying tithes in geese, hens and chicks, and fleeces. As the Templars were normally exempt from paying tithes this will require further investigation.
