Bermondsey Good Templars,
The church mentioned in Domesday Book was presumably the nascent Bermondsey Abbey, which was founded as a Cluniac priory in 1082, and was dedicated to St Saviour. Monks from the abbey began the development of the area, cultivating the land and embanking the riverside. They turned an adjacent tidal inlet at the mouth of the River Neckinger into a dock, named St Saviour's Dock after their abbey. But Bermondsey then was little more than a high street ribbon (the modern Bermondsey Street), leading from the southern bank of the Thames, at Tooley Street, up to the abbey close.
The Knights Templar also owned land here and gave their names to one of the most distinctive streets in London: Shad Thames (a corruption of "St John at Thames"). Other ecclesiastical properties stood nearby at Tooley Street (a corruption of "St Olave's"), owned by the priors of Lewes, St Augustine's, and Canterbury, as well as the abbot of Battle. These properties are located within the Archbishop of Canterbury's manor of Southwark, where wealthy citizens and clerics had their houses.
