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