Preceptory Of Denny

Preceptory of Denny - Waterbeach - Manors and other estates

1169 - Ely priory was treating for its transfer to the Knights Templar (Preceptory of Denny)

1176 - Knights Templar, to whom,.. Denny and Elmney were granted in 1176 for an annual rent of 4 marks, (fn. 72) still being paid in the early 14th century

1185 - From Henry Picot, tenant before 1135, WATERBEACH manor had passed by 1166 to his son Aubrey, who held it until the 1170s. (fn. 48) His son Robert was just of age and knighted in 1185, when his mother Mabel's uncle, the justiciar Ranulph de Glanville, occupied his carucate as guardian. (fn. 49) Robert held the manor until he died in 1218.
1185 - 10 February - Knights Templar consecrate Temple Church in London.

1308 - Denny manor was occupied by the sheriff and royal keepers for over five years from 1308

1324 - The Knights Hospitaller, as successors to the Templars, had formally ceded Denny, of which they had had at best nominal possession, to the king in 1324

1327 - Denny was one of three former Templar manors granted for life to Mary de St. Pol, dowager countess of Pembroke, in an exchange.
1342 - "Waterbeach Abbey" convent refounded there in 1342 at once received her grant of Denny manor in free alms
1377 - Countess Mary de St. Pol often visited the abbey until her death in 1377, when she requested burial before the high altar.

1539 - The united manors, usually styled WATERBEACH WITH DENNY, to which almost the whole parish belonged, remained with the abbey until its surrender in 1539

(There is no direct Outlaw connection. The Preceptory was originally the home of the Benedictine Monks of Ely then taken over by the Knights Templar in 1169. (Speculation: Saxon "Outlawe" monks join the Knights Templar.
Speculation: "John de Bernewelle - Outlawe" was a Hospitaller appears out of West Dereham in the 1300's ? )
Very much in the neighborhood...) and then there is the Glanville connection to Waterbeach and the Knights Templar, to whom, following disputes, Denny and Elmney were granted in 1176 ... hmmm...

Benedictine monks, cell of Ely fd.1159; Knights Templar preceptory fd. 1169
Franciscan nuns 1308; dis. 1536; granted to Edward Erlington c.1539; currently part of the Farmland Museum (EH)

The Templars: Knights of God - By Edward Burman
...
Some Templar houses had specialized functions. The Preceptory of Denny in Cambridgshire, part of which is extant, was a hospital for sick and superannuated brothers. The original priory, belonging to the monks of nearby Ely, passed to the Templar hands in 1170 and may indeed have been purchased with the specific aim of creating a hospital. When the fraternity at Denny was arrested in 1308, all but two 'must have been elderly, 1 was insane and 2 were crippled by age and infirmity.

The Belief and Ritual in England Before and After the Coming of The Normans - by Daniel Rock, D.D. PART I. CHAP. VIII.
...
88 Lego portatori campanse orantis circa villam de Tykhull vjd. die exequiarum pro anima mea (Test. Ebor., p. 141). Sir Adam Outlaw, priest, bequeaths a tenement to the West Lynn town bellman, on condition that on the vigil of Sir Adam s "yere day" this bellman " pray for the souls of Thomas of Acre and Muriel his wife, his (Sir Adam s) soul,, and the souls of his benefactors, with his bell going about the town," &c. (Blomefield, Norfolk, viii. 536). -

Maybe referring to Castle Acre in Kings Lynn - It is 15 miles (24 km) east of the town of King's Lynn Home of Castle Acre Priory

Castle Acre - Kings Lynn

The Cambridge, Ely and King's Lynn road, the great Fenland highway
...
DISMAL HALL 231 XXXV RETURNING to the high road at Cottenham Corner, and passing the junction of the road from Waterbeach, we come presently, at a point six and a half miles from Cambridge, to a place marked " Dismal Hall" on large-scale Ordnance maps. Whatever this may have been in old days, it is now a small white-brick farmhouse, called by the occupier " The Brambles," and by the landlord " Brookside." The name perhaps derived originally from some ruined Roman villa whose walls rose, roofless and desolate, beside the ancient Akeman Street. It is a name belonging, in all probability, to the same order as the "Caldecotes" and " Coldharbours," met frequently beside, or in the neighbourhood of, Roman ways ; places generally conceded to have been ruined houses belonging to that period. The modern representative of " Dismal Hall " stands beside a curiously small and oddly-shaped field, itself called " Dismal " ; triangular in form and comprising only two acres. Half a mile beyond this point, a pretty group of cottages marks where the way to Denny Abbey lies to the right across a cow -pasture. A field -gate whose posts are the battered fragments of some Perpendicular Gothic pillars from that ruined monastery, crowned incongruously with a pair of eighteenth- century stone urns, clearly identifies the spot.

There has been a religious house of sorts on this spot since eight hundred years ago, and most of the remains are of the Norman period, when a settlement of 232 THE CAMBRIDGE ROAD Black Monks from Ely settled here. In succession to them came the Knights Templars, who made it a Preceptory, and when their Order was suppressed and ceased out of the land, in consequence of its corruption and viciousness, the nuns of St. Clare were given a home in these deserted halls. Close upon four hundred years have gone since they, too, were thrust forth, and it has for centuries past been a farmhouse.