This week Gerry Brooke goes on the trail of the Templars, that mysterious band of medieval monastic knights who were disgraced and disbanded between 1308 and 1312.

With a base for their ships in Bristol – it was in the Temple church/Temple Meads area – the knights, who were very wealthy, had also been given lands in Somerset too.

Their main HQ in the county, known as a preceptory, was at Templecombe, near Wincanton, where a mysterious painted head of Christ, now in the church, was discovered in recent times.

As well as owning land at Temple Cloud and nearby Cameley the Templars also had an estate high on the Mendip plateau at Temple Hydon, above Blagdon and West Harptree, where they kept many sheep.

Although we don’t know exactly when the knights acquired the lands around Temple Cloud their legacy remains in the old field names – Inner and Outer Temple Field and Temple Mead.

Juliet Faith, who has researched the history of the Templars in the West Country, thinks that they may have gained these lands through Almeric St Maur, a Provincial Master of the English Templars who held office between 1200 and 1218.

An important advisor to King John, who relied on the Templars for financial support, Almeric was present at the signing of the Magna Carta and is buried in London’s Temple church.

The St Maur family were, at one time, big landowners in Somerset but all this came to an end in about 1400 when, without a male heir, the family name died out.

It is more than likely, says Juliet, that it was through the St Maur family that the Templars became Lords of the Manor in Temple Cloud/Camely.

In 1201 King John re-affirmed an earlier gift of these lands to the religious order.

Before this date the manor had belonged to the monks of Bath Abbey and then later, to the De Marisco’s, a shifty and unreliable family who had a base on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel and who were later declared outlaws.

A strange, wooden, iconic head found at Camely – it has a lozenge border and Moorish or Semitic features – may possibly be linked to the Templars.

Whatever it’s purpose or meaning – and we will probably never know now – it’s been suggested that it was bought to Somerset from the east by returning crusaders.

But, as yet, no academic work had been done to establish the figure’s authenticity, or otherwise.

What else do we know about the Templars in Somerset?

Well, not very much.

Apart from their HQ in Templecombe, we know that they owned lands in Puriton, Lopen, Long Load, Doulting, Lullington, Merriott and Crewkerne.

Nearer to home they held lands in Bishopsworth, Worle, near Weston, and Portishead.

But apart from that, it’s all speculation