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Lost orders: Time Team and the Knights Hospitaller of Halston Hall
The Knights Hospitaller were forged in the fury of the Crusades, providing protection, hospitality, and medical care for travellers in the Holy Land, and building fundraising communities back in Britain. Few of these sites have been excavated in detail, but Time Team have been investigating a Shropshire example. Carly Hilts spoke to Stewart Ainsworth.
In the turbulent period of the Crusades, a number of medieval religious orders combined their contemplative role with that of the knight, creating formidable fighting forces of warrior monks who also performed acts of charity and hospitality for pilgrims in the Holy Land. Perhaps the most famous of the military orders was that of the Knights Templar, but they were not operating alone. There were the Knights of St Lazarus, whose communities often included hospitals for those suffering from leprosy, and the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem – ‘Knights Hospitaller’, for short – whose main purpose was to care for poor, sick, and injured pilgrims. For noblemen w
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