A Possible Templar Location at De Bijvanck, Beek, the Netherlands

In the woods of De Bijvanck near Beek in the Liemers lies a moated mound called Het Rondeel or The Castle. Local tradition links it to the Templars and even tells of knights burned nearby. What lies behind the story, and what would count as evidence?

The site and the tradition
The late Ben Brus included Beek in the Liemers in his list of possible Templar sites [1]. He pointed to the circular moated mound in the forest, the fertile soil, and the medieval road known as the Karwegh, with a toll at Beek [1]. Local lore adds that the bishop of Utrecht dissolved a commandery at Beek and that about eight knights were burned on a meadow nearby [1]. The street name Tempelheerstraat in Beek dates only from 1970, when the council chose it to keep the legend alive [1]. Early in the nineteenth century the owner dug up heavy foundations of a tower, dated to about 1300 [1]. The first written mention of De Bijvank is from 1361, and nothing is known about the years of the order [1]. The local historian John Thoben searched archives for years and found no direct proof; he offered only a hypothesis that former Templars lived on as travelling Lombard moneylenders, which he calls a historical hypothesis [1].

What the sources say about the Templars in the Netherlands
The documented Templar presence in the present Netherlands is very small. Michel Nuyttens’ survey of the Templars in the Low Countries discusses only one Dutch commandery, Ter Brake near Alphen [2]. The only other certain site is Zaamslag in Zeeland [3]. In neighbouring Flanders the brothers were questioned in Paris in 1310, and some later joined the Hospitallers [4]; the studies cited here record no burning of Templars in the Low Countries. A story of knights burned near Beek seems to echo the French burnings of 1310 and 1314 rather than a known local event.

A hypothesis to test
A moated mound in a forest can be many things: a small castle, a hunting enclosure or a manor. To make De Bijvanck a Templar site, one would need a medieval charter naming the order, an archaeological date for the mound and a link to an owner. Until then the tradition belongs to the folklore of the Liemers, not to the history of the order.

De Bijvanck has a moated mound, a medieval road and a vivid local legend. None of these is evidence for the Templars. The site deserves archival and archaeological research, but for now it is a possible, not a probable, Templar location.

This blog, an improved version of an earlier one, is original work by TemplarsNow^TM based on an AI-assisted quick scan on the topic. References and further reading, Open Access if available, all links verified November 3, 2026 and all sources checked but not all studied in detail: [1] Brus, B.Th. (n.d.) Beek in de Liemers, Sporen van de Tempelieren in Nederland, tempelieren.nl (as used in the original post); [2] Hosten, J. (2008) Review of M. Nuyttens, Krijgers voor God. De orde van de tempeliers in de Lage Landen (1120-1312), BMGN Low Countries Historical Review 123 (3), web review; [3] TemplarsNow (2013) The Temple of Zaamslag or Tempelhof; [4] Hooghe, F. (2010) The Trial of the Templars in the County of Flanders (1307-12), in: J. Burgtorf, P.F. Crawford and H.J. Nicholson (eds), The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307-1314), Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 285-299.

Illustration: the estate De Bijvanck, Beek (Montferland), photo Pieter Delicaat (2022), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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