The Knights Hospitaller in north London

All the time I’m discovering places where the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller had bases of operation in England. Today, I had a big surprise. On the site of Alexandra Palace in north London, the Knights Hospitaller once had a dairy farm – something I never knew.

This nugget of medieval information popped out of a book in my collection called London Pictorially Described published in 1891. It claims that the land on which Alexandra Palace is built was owned by the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem and run from their priory in central London – Clerkenwell to be exact.

Alexandra Palace (pictured below), for those of you who don’t know, is a large public building erected by the Victorians in 1875. Fondly known as “Ally Pally”, it’s where the BBC started broadcasting from in 1936. I used to live nearby and it hosts many events including rock concerts and antiques fairs.

But I was blissfully unaware that 800 years ago, it was in the hands of the rival military order to the Templars – the Hospitallers. It was this order of sacred warriors that eventually took over most of the Templars’ property when they were crushed by the Pope and the King of France.

FIND OUT MORE: Why did the Templars worship heads?

The end of the Knights Hospitaller in this area of London

Close by is the London suburb of Muswell Hill – which derives its name from an ancient well, the Mossy Well. It was one of several healing wells around the city of London. Should be said that at this time, London was much smaller – a densely populated square mile that could be viewed in the distance.

According to my Victorian book on London, a group of enterprising nuns managed the dairy farm for the Knights Hospitaller and further enriched themselves by selling alleged “miracle-working water” from the well. Both Hospitaller control of the area and the presence of the nuns ended when King Henry VIII dissolved England’s abbeys and convents during the 16th century Protestant Reformation.