Temple Bruer Temple Bruer is in a farm - yard in the civil parish of Temple Bruer with Temple High Grange , North Kesteven , Lincolnshire , England . It is one of the few Knights Templar sites left in England where any ruins remain standing . Its name comes from its Templar ownership and its position in the middle of the Lincoln Heath , " bruyère " ( heather ) from the French language current at the time . It was founded in the period 1150 to 1160 and the order was dissolved in 1312 . It is at grid reference , located between the A15 and A607 roads , north from Cranwell . The site has been excavated twice , once in Victorian times and again at the start of the 20th Century . Rise and Fall of the Knights Templar in Lincolnshire . The financing of wars , particularly in places as far away as the holy lands , was an expensive enterprise . The Templars financed their military campaigns through the income generated by their estates all over Europe , including several in Lincolnshire . Most of these served primarily as a means to generate income , but the Temple Bruer estate on the Lincoln Heath ( a relatively featureless landscape largely free of trees ) was different in that it was particularly suitable for use as a base for the practising of military manoeuvres . It thus became the centre of the Templars ’ estates in Lincolnshire . The Templars were suppressed at a time when England was on the brink of economic disaster . However , the great change in emphasis from arable to sheep farming was part of the recovery from that disaster . The lifetime of the Templars was one in which the climate allowed expansion . This was the period when villages were set up on uplands and fens , villages which became what we know as deserted medieval village s . Nonetheless , much wool was grown on the Lincolnshire uplands , the Wolds and the Heath . That wool was sold through Boston to Flanders and woven into cloth . At Temple Bruer , the Templars were leaders in the sheep farming industry , an economic powerhouse that made Lincolnshire a rich county at the time , breeding Lincoln Longwool sheep . This was a period when Lincolnshire was populous and an economically leading part of England . The economic growth broadly coincided with the decline in the reason for the Templars ’ existence . The heyday of the Crusades was over and people ’ s thinking had moved on . But the Templars ’ wealth remained . They developed into banking . Some potentates were reluctant to repay monies borrowed and a general jealousy of the Templars ’ wealth developed . The community at Temple Bruer was broken up on 10 January 1308 when Edward II sent knights to arrest the monk - knights for alleged crimes , of which none of significance was substantiated . Nonetheless , the Templars in general were too wealthy and kings , particularly Philip IV of France owed them too much money for the order to survive and it was suppressed in 1312 by Pope Clement V . Beresford and Hurst listed " Bruer " as a Deserted Medieval Village in their definitive work , but it is not clear that there was a separate existence as a village . Remaining site . The ruin consists of the intact square south tower of the temple church , one of two added to the original structure during the Templars ' tenure , north and south of the chancel . The car park is on the site of the round nave . About away from the tower , on a farm track passing the site , is a tapering column sculpture of concrete , steel and wood , unconnected with the Templar site . It is approximately high , and 18 inches by at its base , with small inset drawers , up to about , that open .