Cressing Temple Barns: Where history comes alive

Recently, graves belonging to Knights Templars were discovered in Staffordshire, but did you know that Cressing Temple Barns has a rich ancient history as it was a large farmstead built by the Knights Templar?

Situated just outside of the market town of Braintree, Cressing Temple Barns was built in the 13th century. Its Barley and Wheat barns - which are Grade I listed - are now some of the oldest timber barns in the country and are some of the few surviving Templar buildings in England.

The Granary, another Grade I listed timber framed building, was built just after 1575 and is the largest granary in Essex. This, and the other 16th and 18th century buildings on the site, offer a fascinating insight into the history and changing life of the Essex countryside over the last 800 years.

Nowadays, Cressing Temple Barns is regularly used for events and has become a popular visitor destination. While many enjoy the barns themselves, the Tudor Walled Garden offers a faithful recreation of a manor house garden of the time.

Built during the reign of Elizabeth I in the 15th and 16th century, the Tudor Walled Garden would have originally been a pleasure garden for the occupiers of the Tudor Great House which once stood on the site.

However, approximately 100 years later a Dutch merchant who came into ownership of Cressing Temple demolished the Great House. He had little use for it but he kept the garden and turned it into into a kitchen garden for the farmhouse, which is still on the site to this day.

Unfortunately, only the Tudor wall remains of the original garden today, but the present layout is a faithful recreation of a manor house garden of the time. In fact, manuscripts from the 15th and 16th century were used to design the garden which contains elements you would have seen hundreds of years ago.

Take a stroll around the garden and you’re likely to spot medicinal herbs, along with flowers, vegetables and fruit. Also situated on Cressing site is the Jubilee Orchard, which was planted in 1993 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s 40th jubilee, and which features nine varieties of apple, with six originating from Essex.

The ever popular annual Apple Day - which is held in October by the voluntary group, The Friends of Cressing Temple - sees visitors from all over the county attending and buying these native apple varieties.

The Apple Day also features bee keeping and the honey made onsite, Medieval re-enactments, plant sales, willow craft workshops, apple juicing with a traditional press, and the accompanying cider, as well as the opportunity for visitors to learn how to care for their own fruit trees.

Discover more and enjoy the Tiptree Tea Rooms onsite, visit: www.explore-essex.com/cressing-temple-barns

Did you know that Cressing Temple Barns reportedly has some spooky spectors?

There are allegedly five ghosts that haunt Cressing Tempe Barns. There’s an injured Roman soldier with a head wound that appears in the fields next to the barns, a knight who – according to legend – is buried somewhere on the site, the spirit of a cavalier, an ostler (a groom or stable hand) who was killed in a tragic accident and the footsteps of an unidentified man who lost his partner “in a fire on the estate hundreds of years ago”.