The Templars of Neusum

Nowadays we associate the Knights Templar with crusades, conspiracies, and Dan Brown. But eight hundred years ago, just downstream from Leeds, they were running a large-scale sheep farm — one whose wool was exported not locally but to places most of those working the land could not have begun to imagine. In doing so, they helped establish a tradition of large-scale wool trading that eventually made Leeds one of the great wool cities of the world. Little remains of those ordinary people — but Leeds artist Jon Eland has taken a deep dive into what survives. Join him on a journey back twice as far as the charter Leeds is currently celebrating.

Part of the Leeds Libraries' Leeds400 programme