The Knights Hospitaller in Cononley 

A surprising medieval connection

Long before the present church of St John the Evangelist was built, Cononley had a connection with one of the great religious military orders of medieval Europe: the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St John of Jerusalem.

The Hospitallers held land in Cononley during the Middle Ages. Their property here formed part of the Bailiwick of Kildwick, one of the areas through which the Order administered its estates in Yorkshire.

It meant that this small community in Craven was connected to an international religious order whose story had begun thousands of miles away in Jerusalem.

Who were the Knights Hospitaller?

The Knights Hospitaller had their origins in Jerusalem, where their early work was associated with caring for sick and poor pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land.

They developed into a religious military order, combining a religious vocation with the protection of pilgrims and the defence of Christian territories.

They became known by several names, including the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights of St John and the Order of St John of Jerusalem.

Their patron was St John the Baptist.

Across medieval Europe, individuals and families gave land and property to religious orders. The income produced by these estates helped support their religious, charitable and military work.

Some of the land belonging to the Knights Hospitaller was here in Cononley.

The Knights' land in Cononley

The Hospitallers' property in Cononley was leased to local tenants, with six tenants recorded in the later period.

There was also an intriguing connection between their property and land belonging to Bolton Priory.

Accounts from 1324–25 record a Cononley tenancy from which part of the rent was paid to the Knights of St John. The arrangement can be traced from before 1324 and continued until the upheavals of the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

This means that two important medieval religious institutions had interests in Cononley: the Augustinian canons of Bolton Priory and the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem.

For the people who actually farmed and worked the land, these great institutions were not distant names. They were their medieval landlords.

The Bailiwick of Kildwick

The Hospitallers organised their Yorkshire estates into administrative areas known as bailiwicks.

Cononley's Hospitaller property belonged to the Bailiwick of Kildwick, which corresponded with the enormous ancient Parish of Kildwick.

This is another reminder of how different the medieval geography of the area was from today. Cononley was one of a number of communities within a parish stretching across a substantial part of Craven.

The income from the Hospitallers' estates in this area ultimately helped support the Order and its establishment at Newland, near Wakefield.

St John's Cross

One of the most intriguing possible traces of the Hospitallers can be found in the local landscape.

The name St John's Cross, associated with a former farm on Cross Hills Road, may preserve a memory of land once connected with the Knights of St John.

The tenants of the Hospitallers enjoyed particular rights and privileges, and crosses were associated with their properties. Even after the Order's lands passed into other hands, some of these old rights and customs continued.

It is therefore possible that the name St John's Cross preserves an echo of Cononley's medieval Hospitaller past.

What is now simply a local place-name may have a history stretching back hundreds of years.

Templars and Hospitallers

The story also has an interesting connection with the Knights Templar.

The Templars and Hospitallers were separate religious military orders, although their histories frequently intersected.

The Knights Templar were suppressed in 1312. Much of their property subsequently passed to the Knights Hospitaller, strengthening an Order which would survive in England for more than another two centuries.

This gives the medieval history of the ancient Parish of Kildwick a particularly fascinating dimension.

At St Andrew's Kildwick, the effigy of Robert de Styveton recalls a local Knight Templar who died in 1307.

At Cononley, meanwhile, land was held by the Knights Hospitaller.

Two of the most famous religious military orders of medieval Europe therefore have connections with communities only a short distance apart.

The end of the Hospitallers in England

Unlike the Templars, the Knights Hospitaller survived throughout the later Middle Ages.

Their position in England finally changed during the Reformation. In 1540, during the reign of Henry VIII, the Order was suppressed in England and its property passed into other hands.

Yet centuries of landholding do not disappear overnight.

Old property arrangements, rights and place-names could survive long after the medieval institutions which created them had vanished.

In Cononley, the story of the Hospitallers remained written into the landscape.

Two St Johns

There is an intriguing coincidence in Cononley's Christian history, but an important distinction needs to be made.

The medieval Order of St John of Jerusalem was associated with St John the Baptist.

The present village church is dedicated to St John the Evangelist, the disciple of Jesus traditionally associated with the Fourth Gospel.

They are two different St Johns, and there is no evidence that the dedication of the present church arose from the medieval Hospitaller connection.

Instead, they represent two separate chapters in Cononley's Christian history.

The first takes us back to medieval land owned by an international religious order.

The second belongs to the later story of Christian worship in the village and the building of St John the Evangelist.

A medieval story beneath modern Cononley

There is no surviving Hospitaller church or commandery in Cononley.

Instead, their presence is discovered through medieval records, landholding and names in the local landscape.

Those fragments reveal something remarkable.

Medieval Cononley was not an isolated village on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. Through the land of the Knights Hospitaller, it was connected to a religious movement which stretched across Europe and whose origins lay in Jerusalem.

The knights themselves have long since gone.

But their story remains part of the landscape and history of Cononley.