Qualla: Temple Church https://qualla.com/temple-church en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/temple-church-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Temple Church https://qualla.com/temple-church Temple Church: Introduction https://qualla.com/temple-church/ Photo credit Public domain. There is a circle of stone effigies on the floor of the Round Church. Nine medieval knights, carved in Purbeck marble from the 13th and 14th centuries, lie with their legs crossed and their hands folded over the hilts of their swords. They are some of the oldest surviving sculpted figures in England. The most famous among them is William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke - the man who, in this very room in January 1215, brokered a meeting between King John and his rebellious barons. The grievances raised at the Temple that day would be addressed five months later at Runnymede, in the document Magna Carta. Marshal lies here. So do his sons. So do other Crusader knights, and a Lord Chancellor of England, and the playwright John Marston, and the poet Oliver Goldsmith. The round church above them, consecrated on 10 February 1185 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem himself, is older than 99 percent of all surviving English churches.

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/temple-church-wp/gcpv-temple-church-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Temple Church: The Round Church https://qualla.com/temple-church/ Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Knights Templar built it in the shape they considered holy. After the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, the Templars made their headquarters on the Temple Mount - specifically in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which the Christians called the Temple of Solomon, and the nearby Dom...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/temple-church-wp/gcpv-temple-church-the-round-church.mp3 0:06 2 full Temple Church: Banking and Magna Carta https://qualla.com/temple-church/ Photo credit on_dit, Public domain. The Templars in London were enormously rich and enormously powerful. They functioned as Europe's first international bankers, transferring funds across the continent on letters of credit so pilgrims and crusaders did not have to carry gold. The Master of the Temple in London sat ...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/temple-church-wp/gcpv-temple-church-banking-and-magna-carta.mp3 0:06 3 full Temple Church: Wren, Bombs, Rebuilding https://qualla.com/temple-church/ Photo credit Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Temple Church survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 because the fire stopped just short of Fleet Street. Christopher Wren still gave it a refurbishment afterward, installing the church's first organ and adding an altar screen. The Victorians stripped much of Wren's work o...

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]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/temple-church-wp/gcpv-temple-church-wren-bombs-rebuilding.mp3 0:06 4 full Temple Church: O for the Wings of a Dove https://qualla.com/temple-church/ Photo credit Elisa.rolle, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Temple Church has a royal peculiar status, meaning it answers directly to the Crown rather than to any bishop, and its choristers have the historic privilege of wearing scarlet cassocks. A choir in the cathedral tradition was established here in 1842 by Edward Hopkins. By the...

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Image: Elisa.rolle | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/temple-church-wp/gcpv-temple-church-o-for-the-wings-of-a-dove.mp3 0:06 5 full Temple Church: The Da Vinci Code and the Roses https://qualla.com/temple-church/ Photo credit Basher Eyre, CC BY-SA 2.0. Dan Brown chose the Temple Church for a key scene in The Da Vinci Code in 2003 because of its Templar history; the film version was shot inside the church in 2005. The novel made the location famous to a new global audience. But the church has always quietly held layered associat...

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Image: Basher Eyre | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/temple-church-wp/gcpv-temple-church-the-da-vinci-code-and-the-roses.mp3 0:06 6 full